


The Proper Function of Man

by Lynzee005



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21868003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: A mystery guest from an ocean away. Riots in the streets. A murderer on the loose.All in a day's work for Edmund Reid... until it isn't.
Relationships: Edmund Reid/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Christmas 1897. I'm not sure on the timelines but let's say it's largely canon-divergent after the S4 premiere.
> 
> My first Ripper Street fic. I hope you enjoy it!

December 1897  
Commercial and Fournier

It happens quickly, as these things often do: in the shadows, under cover of darkness, when no one is watching—whether by design or pure happenstance.

She bundles her things into her satchel and says goodnight on her way out the door, narrowly avoiding a collision with two people on the walkway. They barely notice, which is fine with her; people rarely notice her, and that’s how she likes it. With a bright laugh, she turns her face to the sky—it had been a beautiful day—and sets off for home.

At the entrance to the nearest alleyway, she’s stopped by a beggar, and hands over a coin from the depths of her pocket. He takes her by the hand and pulls her closer, examines her fingertips clutching the silver piece. She loses her smile and tries to pull away.

“What horrible things have these hands done today?” he asks as he pulls her into the alley.

She turns to the street but nobody notices.

People rarely notice her.

She doesn’t get the chance to scream.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Charlotte Street  
15 minutes walk away

_Dear Mathilda,_

_I will be brief, as it will not be too much longer ere we meet face-to-face. Enclosed is the promised portrait of myself, so you may know my likeness upon my arrival at Waterloo Station._

_Now that we have exchanged photographs, all that is left is to wait._

_I am, as always, ever-so-grateful for the friendship you have offered me and I very much look forward to our meeting._

_Yours truly,_

_Norah_

Mathilda tucked the letter into the drawer of her writing desk and looked out the window into the street below. Streaks of taffy-coloured sky signaled the end of the day, a winter’s sunset bathing the East End in a spill of warmth that Mathilda hadn’t seen in years. Three winters at the seaside, following six years in the restrictive “care” of the Buckleys; Mathilda quickly did the math, even though she didn’t have to: she hadn’t seen a Christmas in Whitechapel from this window since she was ten years old. 

_It’s so beautiful_ , she thought as she took it in. Her father would disagree—there was no beauty to be found in the East End, as far as he was concerned—but Mathilda smiled and sighed, leaning her chin in her hand. Down the street to the north was a Christmas market on Whitechapel Road; she could hear the vendors plying their wares still, even through the closed window pane. To the south and the banks of the Thames, ships from all over the world sat against docks and piers, their cargo unloaded before the city shut down for Christmas. 

And in the west, over the divide between her city and The City—where she thought if she looked hard enough she might see the towers of St. Paul’s, hear its bells—was that painted sky of canary yellow and peach muslin… 

She had so many things she wanted to do, so many places to explore and become reacquainted with. And with a guest on the way—arriving tomorrow—Mathilda knew she would have ample opportunity to do so. 

It filled her heart with such gladness.

All the same, that was tomorrow’s joy. _Tonight_ , Mathilda thought, _there is work to be done_ . _Enough dreaming._

Her smile still played on her lips as she pushed herself from her desk and slid the chair underneath. If her father had listened to her, he would be home soon; their supper was on the stove, and she would have to stoke the fire in the hearth beside his evening reading chair, where she’d already placed the day’s newspaper for his after dinner enjoyment. 

Their simple domestic routine, honed to perfection, and about to be disrupted in the best way possible by this wonderful stranger from across an ocean…

* * *


	2. There's Been Another...

Inspector Bennet Drake he leaned back in his seat behind his desk, his creaking chair the only sound to break the stillness of the afternoon for the past hour or more. “What plans have you and your girl for the holiday?”

Inspector Edmund Reid, poring over his notes, barely shook his head. Drake waited for a response but, when none was immediately forthcoming, he took a long pull from the mug of blackest black coffee in front of him instead; Reid, for his part, let his shoulders sag as he pretended to examine the fountain pen in his hand. 

He didn’t quite know how to answer. Surely his new boss, his old friend, meant well by it. But Reid’s return to Whitechapel hadn’t been planned, nor had it been entirely welcome. He would have wished to stay by the sea forever; in his darker and more surly moments, he cursed Deborah Goren for darkening his doorway once again and bringing him back to the soot and fog of Whitechapel, to walk along its dank cobbled streets, amongst its dank cobbled people. The gaiety of Yuletide seemed too stark a contrast for Reid to reconcile against the reality outside his walls. 

All memories of their seaside home, that place, that moment in time and their life within it, seemed woven of gossamer now, a hazy vision shrouded in mist. A part of him longed to return.

But it was a small part.

Admitting that meant he would have to face the fact that being back in Whitechapel was the first time he’d felt  _ normal _ in three years. He looked down at his desk, covered in papers and cases. For all his attempts at maintaining a life for himself and Mathilda in Hampton-on-Sea,  _ life  _ hadn’t pulsed through his veins like  _ this  _ since the day he’d last sat behind his desk, in the old station house. 

_ Whitechapel is cold and dark and full of grime and damp and it’s wonderful _ , he thought, a guilty heat radiating through his chest. But that was for Reid’s heart to hold.

He set down his pen and cleared his throat. 

“Mathilda enjoys the pageantry—a lit tree, the markets, carolling—and so I plan to indulge her,” he said.

“A father’s prerogative,” Drake nodded approvingly.

Reid smiled in mutual understanding; Drake had quickly taken to fatherhood in the weeks since Connor had entered his and Rose’s life, and even though it had been predicated on such sadness as the execution of their one-time friend Susan Hart, Reid couldn’t help but admire the happiness that seemed to envelop Drake at the mere mention of his sudden family. 

Reid continued. “There is much to see,” he said. “And it is, as you know, our first Christmas in the city since—” 

_ Well,  _ Reid scolded himself as he cut off his words at their source, leaving his mouth agape for a moment before he closed his teeth and set them together _. He can put the rest together.  _ It wasn’t as if his former Sergeant and current boss hadn’t seen him through the worst of it in the decade since Reid’s life had first fallen apart. He would have known that Christmas had lost much of its brilliance in the years since Mathilda’s disappearance, the estrangement between the Reid’s, Emily’s suicide. 

He had rebuilt it, however, and it shone brilliantly around the gemstone that was his Mathilda—his entire reason for being. He only hoped that Whitechapel wouldn’t dull her shine...

Drake cleared his throat, and Reid realized he had let his sentence hang for too long. He smiled, casting his eyes askance at his friend, sussing out the direction of his inquiry. “Why do you ask?”

“Ah, well,” Drake offered, “See, with it bein’ our first Christmas too, with the lad and all, Rose thought it might be…well, that is, she wanted me to ask…if you and Mathilda have no plans at all, for supper, that is…”

Reid sighed and smiled more broadly. “That is a very kind offer, Bennet,” he said. “A very kind offer indeed. But—” 

Drake nodded. “But you must refuse.”

“Not out of humility nor ego. We—Mathilda and I—we would happily join you and your family. I am honoured that you should ask. But it is rather a matter of… _ imposition _ .” He winced at the sound of the word, feeling it not quite right to explain what he meant. “We will have a guest staying with us.”

“Well bring him along!” Drake grinned.

Reid grimaced. “ _ Her _ ,” he corrected. “It is a woman.”

Drake’s eyes widened and his face fell in shock; Reid held up a silent hand in protest.

“Not what you think,” he said. “She is a… friend of Mathilda’s.”

Drake nodded and  _ hmm’d _ . “Well, that’s nice,” he said. “Quite nice indeed.”

Reid felt the sudden and inexplicable need to keep talking, to keep offering an explanation. “They became friends through the post. They write letters, share ideas.” Reid furrowed his brow.  _ Why are you telling him all of this?  _

“Is that so?”

“Indeed,” Reid said. “Mathilda read her account of the gold rush that has since swept the Canadian Yukon and… well, they struck up a correspondence, and—” 

At this, Drake’s eyes widened considerably. “The female prospector? Norah Cole?” he pitched himself forward against his desk. “Your Mathilda is friends with Norah Cole?”

Reid was taken aback. “I believe that is her name, yes, though she was never a prospector, not to my knowledge.”

“Rose won’t shut up about ‘er!” Drake exclaimed. “The stories were in all the papers. Her account of life in the North is bein’ published here, last I ‘eard, in a week or so. Is that why she’s coming ‘ere?”

Amused, Reid shook his head. “I believe so, yes.”

“And she’s stayin’ at your house?”

“Yes. For a fortnight, or thereabouts. Until just after the new year,” he checked his pocketwatch. “She sails from America as we speak, as a matter of fact. Set to arrive tomorrow from Southampton on the two-thirty into Waterloo station.”

Reid looked up again to see Drake’s rakish grin, and suddenly felt self-conscious again.

“Come now, Bennet—”

“I hear she’s six feet if she’s an inch,” he said. 

“Well I wouldn’t know—” Reid said, barely able to hide his bemusement.

Drake was undeterred. “With hair like a sunset and emeralds for eyes.”

“That so?”

“The Amazon of the Yukon, they call her.”

“And who’s  _ they _ ?”

At that, Drake finally grumbled. “All I’m sayin’ is she’s a force to be reckoned with, and no mistake,” he said. “Rose’ll never believe it. Norah Cole, right here in Whitechapel.”

Reid acknowledged Drake’s comment with a swift nod as he stood up, pushing his chair back against the dusty floor of the office, and collected the papers in front of him—case files: a burglary, two cases of assault—into a neat stack. “If it is business which brings Miss Cole to London, I cannot promise anything, but if she is so inclined and has the time to spare, I’m sure we can arrange something. Dinner, perhaps”

“Oh that’ll please the missus,” Drake said. “Are you off then?”

Reid stood up to his full height and swallowed past a knot in his throat. “I promised Mathilda fewer late nights away,” he said softly. “If it’s all right with you, that is.”

The Inspector nodded, his face softening into a smile. “Good on you, Edmund. That’s a promise I’ll see to it that you keep.” He thumbed toward the door. “Nothin’ ‘ere that can’t wait until morning.”

With another brisk nod, Reid took his leave. His jacket slung over his arm, his hat in hand, he stepped down toward the lobby, where his ears were met with the sound of a policeman’s whistle. He turned to look at Drake, and after but a moment’s pause, the two men sprang into action, dashing to the ground floor and meeting two officers bustling through the door, a gurney between them.

“Found ‘er leaned against the fence on Commercial,” the first said. “In the church yard.”

Reid took one look at and knew without needing closer inspection that the woman was dead. Drake, too, went pale. The men held the gurney still all the same for the Inspectors to examine her. Reid’s blood ran cold; he didn’t see any signs of violence, but it didn’t matter—a dead woman in his station house, even if it wasn’t  _ his  _ station house any longer, always brought him back to that terrible autumn of 1888.

“Her throat,” Drake said, and Reid glanced to where the woman’s collar sat slightly unbuttoned, and he caught the edge of the stiff cotton fabric— _ A uniform?  _ he wondered—between his index and middle finger, turning it down to get a better look. Red and purple mottling around her neck attested to a possible cause of death. 

“Strangulation,” Reid muttered as he let the fabric go. From the look of her face, and knowing what little he’d gleaned from years of working alongside Captain Jackson in his Dead Room, Reid felt confident that she was only recently killed. “Rigor mortis is starting to set in. Two hours, I’d say.”

Drake turned to the second policeman. “You found her in the church yard? On your beat?”

“Yes sir.”

“And you saw nothing suspicious beforehand?”

“No sir,” he said. “Naught but the body, sir.”

Drake took a sighing breath and shook his head. “Place her in cold storage. And then rouse the Captain from whatever den of filth he’s drunk himself stupid in.”

Reid took a sharp breath. “We should head to the scene, see if there are any clues as to—”

“Edmund,” Drake said with a soft smile. “Go home, my friend. The poor lass’ll keep. Ain’t nothin’ more we can do for her now, not ’til Jackson arrives. So go, have supper with your girl.”

Edmund nodded, still torn between his duty to his work and his promise to his daughter. But Mathilda won out, as she often did. He stepped back from the body. “You’ll send someone ‘round when Jackson gets here?”

Drake nodded. “Once he’s sobered up, anyway,” he sneered, momentarily, before turning back to Reid. “But you’re off tomorrow, aren’t you?” 

Edmund began to disagree but remembered, suddenly, his promise to Mathilda to accompany her to the station to meet Miss Cole. He groaned inwardly. 

“Her train doesn’t arrive until—“

“Edmund.”

Reid understood. “As soon as I can,” he said. 

“Go on,” Drake said, and Reid watched as the three men bustled off to the downstairs morgue. Then he slowly, methodically, stepped out into Leman Street beyond, only waiting to dress himself for the chilly weather once the door had closed fully behind him.

A few lonely snowflakes fell from the sky, caught in the blue halo of the lamp above the door. Reid turned up his coat collar and walked out into the barren street, cloaked in winter darkness and hiding, he knew, all manner of sins and sinners within its midnight depths.

He didn’t go straight home. Instead he continued up Leman Street, across Whitechapel Road, to where Leman became Commercial, and the pale Spitalfields spire. Reid shivered in spite of himself as he slowed his approach to the church yard and it’s wrought iron fence. With detective’s eyes, he found the precise location of the unfortunate woman’s demise within minutes: just around the corner, on the north side of the yard, trampled now in the mud and grime, lay a woman’s shawl and behind it, in the yard itself, a leather hand bag. 

_ Not a robbery then,  _ Reid thought as he lifted the bag and examined its contents. Meager possessions aside, it was not the kind of thing a petty criminal would leave behind.

There was also no sign of a struggle, no marks in the street or broken branches from nearby bushes. It was the dinner hour, and the woman had been killed some time before, when sunlight would have still illuminated this corner, at least partially. 

_ Her body was moved here. But from where? _

Reid’s pulse quickened as he scanned the street, a map of the adjoining lanes already populating in his mind. He imagined every nook, every cranny; every building had a name and, ifhe tried hard enough, he could remember a landlord or tenant for each one.  _ The Ten Bells, Cohen’s haberdashery, the Obsidian Clinic… _

Enlivened, Reid planned a course of action. His stomach growled but he pushed back the primal need to eat in order to devote his full attention to the crime scene. With wildly discerning eyes, he mentally photographed every last detail.  _ Evidence must be collected, tagged, catalogued. We must canvas the neighbourhood. By the time Jackson sobers up, we’ll have her name, date of birth, and we’ll know what she ate for breakfast. _

He hated that this thrilled him; there was no denying it now. And Reid suddenly stopped, feeling sick just thinking about it. He should have been home with his daughter, and instead he was playing adventurer on a crime he was specifically asked not to get involved in just yet. 

He set the bag down on the raised curb, shaking off the mud from his fingertips. Another officer on his beat rounded the corner; Reid waved him over. 

“Have this evidence brought to Leman Street,” he ordered. “Bring anything you find. From this area.”

The man’s “Yes Inspector” brought a pang of disgust to Reid’s chest; he backed away from the scene and let the man do his job. A shudder rushed down his spine as he began the long march back to where she should have been all along. 

Trudging home along the muddied cobbles, Reid’s mind wandered around the siren call of this place he had spent his professional career trying to protect and which had called him back just when he thought he was free of her. He’d been back at his desk for a handful of weeks but he felt exhausted beyond words. For his own sake—based on what he’d just done, how he’d just acted—he wondered if perhaps he needed a holiday already

A distraction. 

_ The Amazon of the Yukon... _

Reid turned into his street as he remembered Drake’s words. He had to wonder at the description _. She could be anyone. A wild woman. A criminal. Crudely mannered. Dangerous. You know nothing of her. Save her reputation. _

_ And tomorrow, she’s going to be in your home... _

It was a strangely dazzling thought.

He banished it quickly, shaking his head as he gained his front stoop. Unlocking the door, he pushed his way into the small foyer, greeted by the smell of supper on the hob and the sound of Mathilda singing in the back of the house. All thoughts dissolved into the singularity of his happiness, concentrated right there in his small foyer.

Before he said a single word, however, he scrubbed his hands raw and clean of the dirt from the Whitechapel murder scene, then wiped the gritty residue from the sink basin. He wanted nothing of the outside world to break into _their_ world tonight...


	3. Waterloo

The Next Day  
Waterloo Station 

“I can hear it, Father,” Mathilda said. “The train. I think I can hear it already.”

Reid glanced at the paper in his hand and up at the station platform number, confusion marking his face for a long moment before he registered his daughter’s excitement. He allowed himself a small smile. “This friend of yours, what are her plans in London exactly?”

“I am not entirely sure,” Mathilda replied as she eagerly stood tiptoe, her bonneted head poking up above those of the people in front of her on the platform. “I suspect something _glamorous_. There is great demand for stories from the Klondike. Hers _are_ firsthand, after all.”

“And where exactly is she from?” Reid continued. “What does she do?”

“I believe the better question is ‘What _can’t_ she do?’ I have never seen nor heard of a woman so accomplished.”

“Accomplished?” Reid asked, incredulous. “What sort of accomplishment is there to achieve in the subarctic wilderness?”

Mathilda turned to Reid, barely concealing her eye roll. “Such snobbery, Father,” she said. “If you aren’t careful, you may get a nosebleed.”

Reid made a show of his displeasure, but it was nothing more than that: a show. Mathilda smiled at him, and he smiled back, quickly, before redirecting his attention to the station platform numbers again. “Are you certain we’re in the right place?”

Mathilda rested her head against Reid’s upper arm. “She was born on a farm in Wyoming. _Wyoming_ , Father. Isn’t that such a romantic word? _Wy-o-ming…_ ” she sighed. “She calls herself a Wanderer. She goes where she is needed. That’s what her father did. He helped those on both sides during the North-West Rebellion—you remember that? You had those newspapers about it?”

“I do remember,” he admitted, shocked that his daughter—who would have been a very small girl at the time—recalled it also.

“A Wanderer,” Mathilda repeated. “Going wherever she’s needed. Which means travelling to the Qu’Appelle Valley, or to the Oregon coast, or to Skagway or the Chilkoot…”

Hearing the foreign words in Mathilda’s mouth brought Reid back to the dreams of his boyhood, stories of the Wild West, the vast frontier of North America, the wagon trains during the great migrations and the lawlessness that settled over the towns that had sprung up along the way. For a moment, he felt ten years old again. 

Then he heard it, the locomotive’s whistle, and he suddenly— _desperately_ —desired to see this Wanderer face-to-face.

“How will you know what she looks like?”

Mathilda unclasped her arm from his and reached into the pocket of her dress, producing a small envelope which she carefully unfolded to reveal a tintype portrait of the woman. She handed it to him. “She says the portrait does not do her justice, that it flatters her too much,” she said.

Reid took the portrait in his hand and looked at the black and white visage of a woman unlike any other he’d ever laid eyes on. Dressed in buckskin, her hair a mess of curls falling over her shoulders, and holding a rifle against her shoulder, she looked the part of any adventurer. But the face—fine-boned, a dainty pointed chin, long but crooked nose, eyes that smiled outwardly from the plane of the picture—was what pulled him in, utterly.

She wasn't refined but she wasn't unkempt either. Rather, she had an air of dismissal about her; she knew she wouldn't meet with approval and didn't care one way or the other. It was as if the photographer had asked her to fix her hair or to soften up for the camera a little, and this defiant gaze had been her reply. 

“She’s very beautiful, wouldn’t you say Father?”

Reid nodded; she was beautiful. _What is a woman like this doing settling the rugged and last frontier of the Canadian North?_ he wondered. But then he caught her eyes once more, saw that clear, nonsense-free expression and imagined the fire that burned behind them. _Of_ course, he said to himself. _She's exactly the kind of woman who would do that._

Reluctantly, he handed the photograph back to Mathilda, his mouth suddenly dry. But it mattered not; before a word could be spoken, they were both distracted by the sound of the train whistle once more as the engine came into view against the far end of the platform.

As it slowed to a stop along the platform’s edge, Reid felt himself growing impatient, antsy. Passengers began disembarking and reunions began to crowd the platform, and he joined Mathilda in scanning the crowd for the flame-haired visitor.

“I see her!” Mathilda called out, and Reid followed the line of her arm over the heads of the crowd to see a shock of red hair moving through the sea of people in their direction.

“Norah!” Mathilda called.

Reid watched as the woman turned her head—he could not yet see her face—and cut diagonally through the throng toward them. And when she finally emerged—not quite six feet tall but considerably taller than average, in a pale blue button down blouse and high-waisted tan trousers that added to the illusion of her height, hauling a large blue steamer trunk behind her—the smile she bore for Mathilda seemed to light the entire station. She set down the bag she had slung over her shoulder and stood the trunk on end. 

Then, the two women, his daughter and this stranger from across the ocean, embraced, and Reid watched on in wondrous silence.

“Mathilda Reid,” Norah said, as if exhaling in relief. “Oh it is such a fine thing to finally meet you.”

“And you as well, Miss Cole.”

“ _Please_ call me Norah,” she said, taking a step back and resting one hand on her hip, continuing to gaze, almost maternally, at Mathilda. Reid took the opportunity to study her, his investigative mind tallying up the clues as to who she was before she had the chance to register that he was looking at her in the first place. 

Right from the start, Reid determined that she had lied about the photograph; Norah Cole was, without a doubt, exactly as beautiful in person as her portrait would have led anyone to believe. But she was not in any way a conventional beauty, certainly not as she stood amongst the passengers filing out of the station away from the recently-arrived train. Where other women tightly-corseted themselves into the hourglass shapes dictated by the _couture_ trends, Norah’s shape remained invisible beneath the masculine costume she presented; in fact, Reid could not be entirely sure that the blouse was not in fact a man’s shirt. 

Similarly, the women who streamed past who wore their hair tucked up neatly beneath travel bonnets; Norah’s remained free, pinned back only at the sides and loosely at that. Clearly, she was not one to care for fashion or decorum. She carried her own bags—no porters followed her to assist; _Independent_ , Reid thought. With the added benefit of real-life colour, he saw details in her that had been obscured by the tintype's rough and false copy. Her skin was pale, likely owing to the winter season, but a faintly ruddy cast about her cheeks and nose testified to past experience with severe cold and frostbite. Her hands were unadorned, dainty in structure but plain and work-hardened; her short nails showed signs of having been recently cleaned, and her skin was chapped and dry. 

This he felt the instant she stuck her hand out towards him, and he instinctively reached out to take it.

“You must be Mathilda’s father.”

“I am,” he nodded, finding his voice. “Edmund Reid.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Norah said as she shook his hand and loosened her grip to let go. “I know no one in London aside from my publisher and until the book actually goes on sale I—well, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea _what_ I'd do if it hadn't been for Mathilda's kind offer and you agreeing to it, so—” she trailed off, blushing into the apples of her cheeks. “I talk too much, don't I? I _know_ I do...”

“It’s refreshing,” Mathilda said. “Few people speak their mind in this city.”

Reid looked at his daughter, caught somewhere between disapproval and admiration for the expression of such an opinion. He settled on begrudging amusement, and lifted the corner of his mouth in a slight smile. 

“Is that so?” Norah said to her, returning both hands to her hips and regarding them both with a mixture of awe and amusement before turning around to take in her surroundings. “ _This city_. I can’t believe I’m actually in London.” She looked back, from Mathilda to Reid and back again. “Well, I suppose you should lead the way, else I’ll lose myself in the hustle and bustle and no one'd ever see me again!”

Mathilda was practically giddy with excitement, and as Norah hoisted her satchel onto her shoulder, Reid stepped forward to take the trunk by the handle. Norah, alerted and quick to spring to action, softened only slightly when she saw his gesture.

“If you’ll allow me,” he said by way of apology.

Norah nodded. “A gentleman,” she said with a smile. “Almost forgot what you fellas looked like.”

Her eyes, Reid noted, were not as Drake had said they’d be nor as he'd expected from the reproduction hiding in the folds of Mathilda's pocket; rather, Norah's eyes supplied emeralds with their shade, and gave _them_ their name, not the other way around. Her smile began there, in the outer corners of each eye, and spread across the expanse of her face.

"After you," he said.

She nodded and started off in front of him, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her trousers, and Reid realized with sudden and alarming alacrity that he was, without a doubt, in very big trouble.


	4. Sleepless

As evening descended over London’s East End, Reid—who had taken the afternoon to help their houseguest acclimate—found himself playing wife and mother as he bustled through the downstairs rooms tidying and cleaning up after supper. For an hour, post-meal, Norah had regaled them with the story of her journey here, of travel by dogsled and then carriage and finally of crossing the Canadian prairies by train before boarding a boat and spending a week at sea. The people she’d met had been interesting, she claimed, and she felt fraudulent in their presence; a banquet in Winnipeg, Manitoba had caused her to almost entirely give up on the entire endeavour. Mathilda had been rapt, listening to tales of snowdrifts higher than the roofline of some houses, of animals she’d only read about in books, of the northern lights, of a sun that refuses to set at the height of summer and refuses to rise in the depths of winter. Reid, too, had listened with the same enthusiastic attention as his child. 

For the past hour, however, Mathilda and Norah had been squirrelled away upstairs, getting acquainted; Reid could hear their laughter still.

Their home had never felt more alive.

Eventually, however, Mathilda came down the stairs; she found her father reclined in his chair by the fire, reading the newspaper.

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Norah is wonderful is she not?” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck. 

He patted her forearm. “She is.”

“She says the most  _ amazing  _ things,” Mathilda continued. “Or maybe it’s the  _ way  _ she says it. I’ve met Americans before. I am no stranger to their words and phrases and manner of speaking. But she is just… so  _ direct _ . She hides nothing. I have known her for only a few hours face to face, and she makes me feel as though we are sisters.” Mathilda chuckled. “Though, honestly, she’s old enough to be my mother…”

At that, Reid stiffened. Mathilda had not often spoken of mothers, in general, or of Emily in particular in the years since she’d been back with him, safe in his care where she ought to be; he never pressed, never questioned her, but often wondered how much she missed her mother. As much as he was surprised to consider Norah’s age—he’d thought her no older than thirty on first glance—it was a much more considerable shock to hear the word “mother” uttered from Mathilda’s lips at all. 

He gripped her forearm and stroked the warmth of her skin with his thumb.

“It’s late, darling,” he said to her.

“I know,” she returned. “I was just coming down to say goodnight before I went to bed. I think Norah is tired from her journey as well.”

“I should think so.”

Mathilda nodded. “I’ll be going to the butcher tomorrow to arrange for Christmas dinner,” she said softly. “Should I assume there will be three of us?”

Reid nodded. “I had also thought to ask Bennet and Rose and their little one over as well,” he said, knowing it would make Mathilda brighten. The desired effect being made, he smiled. “Best reserve a large ham.”

“Maybe a turkey instead?”

Reid smiled. “The biggest you can find.”

She said her goodnights then, and retreated back up the stairs from where she’d come only minutes earlier, leaving Reid alone in the drawing room once more, a decanter of scotch—a small indulgence, indulged infrequently—and his crackling fire, his crinkled paper staining his fingertips a silvery grey.

The silence of the scene was disturbed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs again, descending from the upper landing only a few moments later. Reid smiled to himself.

“One last goodnight, my darling girl?” he asked, turning to face the stairs and finding Norah standing at the bottom, still dressed in her traveling clothes, a bemused grin on her face. 

Reid tossed the paper to the floor and hurried to his feet.

“Pardon me,” he stammered. “I thought—”

Norah clasped her hands in front of her and bowed her head. “She’s a lovely child, your Mathilda,” she said.

Reid nodded; he would have kept the depth of his feelings on the matter to himself, but as his breath caught on his inhale, wrapping itself around the emotion stuck in his throat—always stuck in his throat—he found words to speak that surprised even him. "I was blessed by her birth," he said. "Twice, in fact."

The look on Norah's face told him that she already knew the story, of Mathilda's disappearance and the long years they were apart; she offered a dancing smile in return. "What a lovely sentiment," she said.

She seemed so genuine, as if she truly felt what she was saying; there were no airs put on, no masks. _This is what Mathilda meant_ , he thought. _Perhaps it's the way she says things_.

Norah cleared her throat then, breaking the silence that had stretched on for who-knows-how-long—Reid had not counted the seconds, but it felt like a long time since she'd spoken—and he realized he had spent that time staring at her. He cleared his own throat and put on the airs required of him as host. “Is your room to your satisfaction?”

“Very much so,” she replied. “I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep in a bed that is not subject to the roiling whims of the Atlantic chop.”

Her eyes flashed with mischief as she spoke. It was Reid’s turn to bow his head, in deference as much as by reason of diversion; he had no idea what to do with his hands, where to look with his eyes, what to say with his mouth. Looking down, at least he didn’t have to worry about offending the carpet.

Norah took a breath and a halting half step towards him, and the floorboards creaked in response. “Before I turn in,” she began, “I thought I might take a quick stroll through the neighbourhood. As much as I’ve struggled with sleep this past week, I’m far too excited to turn in just yet, and—”

Reid forgot his embarrassment and looked up at her with frantic eyes. “At this hour?”

Norah smiled, casting her eyes from his face to the fire and then back again. “What other hour could it be?”

Reid shifted his weight from one foot to the other and sighed. “This is Whitechapel, Miss Cole,” he said. “You cannot expect good things to happen after sundown here, especially to a woman such as—” 

Norah continued to grin a sideways smile that quirked her mouth into what appeared to be an apostrophe lain on its side; possessive, and possessing. “You’re worried about _me_?”

Reid's stomach clenched in response. Worrying was the least of it; he knew, better than perhaps anyone, the horrors that lived in the streets he called home. It had been only twenty four hours since the last woman had been brought in from the street to Jackson’s cold room; he’d forgotten about that all day, in the excitement and newness of the visitor, but it all came back with startling alacrity.

But he couldn't tell her _that_. Instead, he found himself circling back to her question; it was as if she couldn't him deigning to consider her well-being. He wasn't sure whether to be insulted or concerned.

“Yes, I am,” he said. "Of course I am."

“Well,” she began. “Your care is duly noted, Mr. Reid, but misplaced. I am not a wilting flower apt to be blown away by the first stiff breeze.”

He chewed on his words. “I do not mean to sound patronizing.”

Norah set her hands on her hips, this time not in joviality but rather in defiance. “All right then.”

Reid set his lips in a firm line as he contemplated what to say next. “Miss Cole, pardon me, but I’ve seen too much of the terror these streets are capable of producing and must  _ strenuously  _ object to your leaving this house alone.”

Norah cocked her head to the side and considered him for a long moment. Under such scrutiny, Reid felt himself begin to fold inward, collapsing beneath the weight of his discomfort. 

“You were on the Ripper case.”

Reid’s heart caught in his chest as the word left her mouth. “I was, yes,” he answered. 

Norah offered a half-smile; her eyes flashed. “It _has_ been ten years.”

“That may be true,” he started. “But even without the threat of violence, our narrow alleys are old and run counter to logic and common sense. It takes a person years to master their layout in ideal conditions—”

Norah softened. “And these are not ideal conditions?”

Reid turned to the window behind him; he offered a simple gesture towards it, his palm upturned. “It’s late, it’s cold, you’re newly arrived from America and, you said so yourself, you’re exhausted,” he said. “No, I do not think these ideal conditions.”

She just laughed and stepped fully into the room. “Well hell,” she said, pausing to size him up. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Reid. But I’ll play by your rules.”

Reid exhaled a sigh; he couldn't properly express how relieved he was. “Thank you, Miss Cole—”

“On two conditions.”

He quirked his eyebrow. “Conditions?”

“One: you must call me Norah,” she said; Reid once again shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot as he averted her eyes. “And two: that you let me sit up with you for a spell. I can't sleep, and you aren't sleeping yet...”

Reid nodded. “I am agreed.”

“Good then,” Norah said, coming to stand in the light of the fire and depositing herself into the chair opposite his.

Reid followed suit. He picked up his newspaper and folded it neatly, tucking it back into the basket beside his chair where he’d found it. Norah eyed the folded broadsheet and gestured with an upward nod of her head in its direction.

“Am I in there?” she asked.

Reid nodded. “A short piece, describing your imminent arrival and the publication of your book.”

Norah shook her head. “I’m not used to the press yet,” she said. “In Dawson City no one gives a hoot who you are as long as you mind your Ps and Qs and stay out of everyone else’s business. But as I made my way to Halifax for the journey here, every city along the way had its own newspapers and the crowds kept gettin' bigger and bigger.” She shrugged. “Who knew a few stories about life on the frontier would set so many tongues a-wagging?”

Reid leaned his head against his knuckles, elbow perched on the armrest. “Mathilda tells me you’re from Wyoming?”

“Originally,” she said. “Though now a citizen of the Yukon Territory, part of the British Empire, a subject of Her Majesty Queen Victoria...” Norah chuckled. “As much as I love the land of my birth, I rather like the sound of all that…  _ regality _ .” She looked up at him. "Have you met her? The Queen?"

Reid marvelled at the way she spoke—he saw it now, heard it, what Mathilda had talked about regarding Norah’s open communication; so much forthrightness, so much emotion. He nodded. "I have, yes."

"Golly!" she whispered. "She's somethin' else, isn't she? A woman on the throne for—how many years is it now? Such an accomplishment!"

Reid brushed his sideburn with the tip of his index finger. He was loyal subject, of course, but he'd never thought of acceding to the throne at the head of a hereditary line of succession as much of an accomplishment, and they'd had long-reigning queens before. _Accomplished is carving out an existence and thriving in a place where nothing else does_ , he thought, looking at her across the fire-warmed space between their chairs.

Norah began to blanch and sat up straight. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve already bored you senseless.”

Once again, Reid had forgotten to speak, so caught up in the spectacle of Norah Cole was he. He shook his head and brought himself to attention. “No! Nothing of the sort." He furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Quite the opposite. I have so many questions for you.”

She blushed, relaxed and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands across her belly.

He did the same. “Although I’m realizing now that perhaps these stories will be in your book, and maybe I ought to wait for their release like the rest of the paying public."

“Nonsense,” Norah chided, her voice softer than the crackle of the fire at her feet. “It’s the least I can do for my London benefactor.”

Reid nodded, uncomfortable— _ When are you ever comfortable? _ —with the association she’d made; he didn’t like the feeling of her being in his debt, didn’t want to consider how great the power differential was—London cop against Arctic trailblazer. He solved crimes and brought criminals to justice; she...probably cleared trees and used them to build her own home, start her own fires, kill and cook her own meals. 

The more he thought about it, the less he liked his chances; she was no more in his debt than her adored Queen Victoria was, which is to say not at all.

He shifted in his seat and hurried to change the subject. “I would _love_ to hear more about the Yukon.”

Norah leaned forward into the space between them. “Don’t tell me— _ The Boys’ Own Magazine _ ?”

Reid, shocked, allowed himself a small chuckle that lived and died in the back of his throat. “How did you—?”

“You’re not the first man I’ve met with adventure on his mind, Mr. Reid,” she leaned back again, and even though her words were meant to tease him, Reid thought he heard the slightest catch her in her voice that... puzzled him. 

He didn't have much time to give it a second thought; she was already wearing the hat of the dutiful ambassador, the role he suspected she had been playing all along. “What do you want to know?” she asked. “The brochure version or the truth?”

_ Everything _ , the little boy in the back of Reid’s mind whispered. But he cleared his throat and searched for the question that would suffice. “Is… is it as easy to find gold as they say it is?”

“Is the gold easy to find?" she asked herself, setting her lips in a firm line while she thought about her answer. “Let me put it to you this way: The truth is, if you’re planning to stake a claim, I believe what gold there is to be found has been found and spoken for.”

“I-I—No, that’s not…” he stammered, tripping over his tongue, until he finally took a breath. “It’s true, I fancied myself an adventurer once, but it seems that no matter how far away I manage to get from Whitechapel, I am never able to lose her entirely.”

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Reid was keenly aware of his being sized up.  _ Just as you did her earlier today _ , he thought, once the hackles of his indignation began to rise up within him. 

Eventually Norah broke the curse and took a breath. “You’ve tried?”

He wondered at her question for a moment before remembering himself. “Once. And it worked for a spell,” he said. “Mathilda and I lived by the sea…”

Norah smiled from the corners of her lips to the apples of her cheeks and right into the very center of her eyes, glinting in the firelight. “The seaside! How charming,” she said. “I can hardly imagine what might have pulled you back here.”

Reid took a breath. “Duty,” he replied.

Norah’s eyebrow lifted, barely, before her face relaxed into placidity once again. "I suppose I know a thing or two about that.” 

Again, Reid puzzled; but, the same as before, he was unable to formulate the question that would give him the answer he wanted before she took a breath and started anew. 

“Have you ever seen gold in the ground, Mr. Reid?”

Reid shook his head.

She looked down at her hands, spreading them wide. “It grows in great thick veins beneath your feet, as if it is the lifestuff of the Earth herself,” she said, and something about her tone of voice told Reid she wasn’t just speaking in flowery metaphor; she believed it. “Sometimes, standing on the bank of a stream and the sun high in the sky, you’d see glitter in the water and not be sure of the source—was it sunlight on the rapids or gold from the ground? Overturning a shovelful of soil would reveal rivers, formed at the very genesis of it all. Fortunes could be made just by setting foot on the land…” she grinned at him. “Or at least that’s what they told the miners down south, to convince them to pack up and head west, then north.” 

_ If she writes half as well as she speaks… _

She continued. “I first arrived… five or six years ago. When the settlements and rivers and mountains still bore the names of the people whose ancestors first lived on that land—Tagish, Denali, Nesketahin, Kwiguk. Before the hoards descended.” She trailed off with a laugh, but it was not one of mirth. Reid couldn’t help but detect a faraway sadness all too familiar to him that clouded her eyes. He’d seen it on the faces of so many people wandering past him and around him whilst on patrol, heard it in the voices of countless survivors of the life that pulsed and writhed around them all. For a moment, so brief it almost escaped detection, Reid found himself… disappointed. Growing up in London, with stories of America beneath his fingertips, he’d never once imagined it to be a place as full of longing and sadness as the one in which he’d spent his whole life.

Before he had a chance to register the emotion, to give it a name, Norah was back, present, her eyes brightened and dancing again in the light of the fire. “Then _I_ wrote about it.”

He couldn’t make her out. The portrait that had been painted of her, by her own words as well as by those of Drake and Mathilda and the society page journalists, had been one of strength and tenacity; the visage in front of him now, beautiful and so sad, was nothing like he imagined.  _ Perhaps she’s just tired _ , he reasoned.  _ It’s been a long journey… _

Instead, he continued. “And now you’re… here.”

Norah nodded. “Indeed I am. From the foothills of the Tetons to the valleys of the Yukon and now to the cobbled streets of Whitechapel…” she stopped, as if caught on a thought. “Two months ago I was settling in for another long and dark winter, and now I find myself in the heart of the British Empire.” She marvelled at it. “A new adventure, I suppose.”

Reid cleared his throat and pressed an advantage. “Was it gold that brought you to the Yukon as well?”

Norah shook her head. “If you’re asking what my profession is—” 

“What I’m asking is: what brings a woman of your… tender years to such a harsh and unforgiving place, and what keeps her there when all is said and done?”

At that she seemed taken aback, and Reid suddenly felt as if he’d stepped too far. His curiosity besting him, he hadn’t been able to stop it; now he wondered if he’d offended. He prepared to apologize, took a breath, set the words against his tongue.

“Harsh and unforgiving though it may be, the Yukon is not a place where one must caution those in their care against walking alone after dark, Mr. Reid.” Then she half-shrugged. "Except perhaps in the dead of winter, when the dark cold is everyone's one and only enemy."

He looked at her; she looked at him. Her meaning was clear as day, and Reid felt sudden shame at having scolded her earlier for wanting nothing more than an evening stroll.

“Perhaps I deserved that.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Reid.”

“Call me Edmund, Miss Cole.”

“And  _ you _ must call me Norah.”

He nodded. “I apologize, Norah,” he said, uttering her name softly, trying it out, unsure if it fit or if he should be allowed to say it; he didn’t feel welcome to the privilege. He averted his eyes, focusing on the fire, now burning low and in need of fuel, and cleared his throat—an action that had become a nervous tic. "I didn't mean to insinuate that you were incapable of taking care of yourself. Clearly, you are accustomed to a life that is full of its own dangers. Those of our borough must seem... quaint in comparison."

Norah shook her head. "Quite the opposite," she said. "Nature is a cruel mistress, I will grant you that, but I believe we are all products of our environment, and those environments devise unique horrors no matter where they are. So I do believe you, about what lurks in the shadows of a Whitechapel map." She looked up at him. "But you would be surprised to learn what similarities exist between East London and Dawson City, Mr. Reid."

Reid wasn't about to let such a comment—the third of the evening—pass without remark. "Miss Cole, I have to ask—"

“You wonder at the motives behind my friendship with Mathilda?”

He was struck dumb by both her interruption and the razor sharp precision with which she'd honed in on what was, indeed, one of his major questions about her yet unanswered. "Well..." he began.

“I do confess that the publication of my book is not the only reason I have come to London, but—” she paused, catching herself before she spoke too much. “Mathilda wrote to me after four chapters of my book were published in one of your newspapers, and she wrote with such intelligence and wit that, as soon as I heard I would be traveling to London, I knew I had to meet her." She smiled. "Brilliant women are not such a rare thing if you know where to look, but Mathilda truly has a one-of-a-kind mind and a heart so full of compassion and warmth..."

Reid didn't know what to say; it was not his place to accept compliments on behalf of his daughter, especially not for things he had no hand in creating. "She is her mother's daughter—” he said softly, before he had a chance to realize what he'd said. "The compassion, I mean. Mathilda comes by it naturally."

Norah nodded but didn't press on.

"She speaks so highly of you, as well," Reid nodded, eager to fill the silence. "And she is a remarkable judge of character."

"Well..." was all she said.

The conversation had taken a turn away from where it had begun, and while Reid could easily trace the path back to where they'd started, he was unsure how to lead it back there now. "Miss Cole—"

“Perhaps it is late, Mr. Reid,” Norah said as she took to her feet. Habit compelled Reid to do the same. She offered a polite bow of her head. “I have a busy few days ahead of me, but... maybe I'll find you sitting by the fire tomorrow night?”

He would have to accept it for now, with more questions than answers swirling about the mysterious and beautiful stranger he'd invited into his home.

_ Their _ home.

_ Old enough to be my mother _ , he heard his daughter’s voice in his head. 

She hardly looked old enough to be Mathilda’s senior. And yet he knew she had to be. She was self-possessed, sure of herself in a way he’d only seen in a few women.  _ Miss Hart… Mrs. Goren… Miss Cobden _ …

_ Miss Cole _ .

A Wanderer, wandering right into his and Mathilda's lives, into the very heart of their dynamic.

In more ways than one...

“Goodnight,” she said, though he knew not how long ago she’d said it; the words rang out in his head like an echo in a canyon, and by the time he’d come to and uttered his own parting salutation in return, she was gone, retreated up the stairs and closing the door on the guest room Mathilda had fastidiously made up in the days leading up to her arrival.

Reid sank back into his chair and waited for the embers on the fire to die down completely before trundling up to his own bed, where he knew he’d find no solace or rest. Not this night.

Not with Norah Cole down the hall.


	5. The More They Stay The Same

The Next Morning

Reid pushed his way into Jackson’s Dead Room, single-minded in his focus. “Tell me you’ve got good news, Captain.”

Jackson looked up from his microscope and sighed. “And a good mornin’ to you too, Reid,” he said as he got to his feet. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I take it?”

Reid softened his scowl. It _had_ been a fitful night, with little rest to be found, as he had expected. With little more than two hours of sleep, he’d given up on the endeavour entirely and whiled away the early morning reading idly from books Mathilda had brought home; he’d found none of them engaging, but neither did they bore him into tedium. His one hope had been to meet Norah at the breakfast table. Unfortunately, one final hour of uncomfortable repose had claimed him as he fell asleep in his study, neck craned, shivering in the vacant cold of a dying fire, and when he awoke it was to find Mathilda in the kitchen, cleaning up the remnants of a light breakfast; Norah had already departed for the day.

 _Woke up on the wrong side of the house and the clock and my own mood, yes, thank you Captain Jackson_ , Reid wanted to say, but instead he huffed and scrubbed the back of his neck, massaging life into his sleep-stiffened shoulders. “Have you identified our unknown woman?”

“I have not,” Jackson said, studying Reid’s face. “But I’ve got a lead for you.”

Reid waited a moment for the American to continue; when he didn’t immediately do so, Reid’s impatience came to a head. “Well?”

“You really are in a foul mood,” Jackson said as he held up his hands in defence. He walked over to the door to the refrigerating cabinet lining the wall and pulled one of the tiled doors open. Sliding the slab out into the room, he lifted the sheet. “I think she’s a nurse.”

“A _nurse_?” Reid said, looking down at the woman. He remembered the night she’d been brought in, how he’d lightly fingered the stiff collar of her blouse and pronounced to himself that he thought it to be a uniform.

Jackson was in the middle of rattling off his list of proofs as to her identity. “...and then there’s the residue on her hands and wrists, which match a chemical cleaner with commercial applications in sterile environments—hospitals, clinics…” he trailed off. “She washed her hands a lot.”

“Surgery?”

Jackson wavered. “Possibly. But I had Constable Grace look into it and not a-one of the major surgeries in the area have reported anything amiss with any of their staff. In fact no one has been reported who matches her description at all.” He shrugged. “It’s early yet, I suppose, but… I mean, look at her. She’s pretty, well-kept, well-fed, groomed neatly… this wasn’t some doss house ladybird. I reckon it won’t be long until _someone_ misses her, if they aren’t doing so already.”

Reid straightened out the linen placed over the woman’s body; the marks on her neck, pinkish-red the night before, had turned dark purple with the passage of time. “Cause of death is strangulation?”

“Correct,” he said. “But not with his hands.”

Reid’s stomach tightened. “A belt?”

“Same as the others…”

Reid recalled the three women, separated by enough days that they hadn’t considered it the handiwork of the same murderer at the time, women who had passed through this room within the last month. The first two had been single women, killed a week apart, both streetwalkers, and as such the violence done to them being the same kind didn’t raise any alarms; countless women had been similarly brutalized, and various hands had brutalized them. It was the sad reality of London’s East End.

It was only upon discovery of the third victim, a week after that, that Jackson had started putting it together that this might have been more than random violence. A married woman, mother to eight children, Irish Catholic and in good standing within her community was an unlikely addition to this serial killer’s roster, but the evidence was mounting: all three women had been strangled with a leather belt and all, it turned out, had been found north of the Whitechapel Road, near Christchurch Spitalfields.

Now a fourth.

And this time, a professional working woman. A nurse.

Reid sighed. “Search the clinics and asylums,” he said. “See if they’ve reported anyone missing—”

“Already one step ahead of you,” Jackson said as he spun back to retrieve a paper map of London. He spread it out on the empty gurney next to him. “Should be hearing back within the hour. This—“ he jabbed a finger into the map. “This is where each of these four women were found.”

Reid came to stand beside Jackson and took in the map; four black x’s marked the spots where the four women were discovered. He traced his finger between the marks.

“All within a few blocks of each other,” he muttered. “Almost within _sight_ of each other.”

“I thought you’d like that,” was Jackson’s somewhat smug reply. “But I don’t think we can deny it any longer, Reid. Four women, same M.O…”

“Don’t say it,” Reid warned, his voice low, and Jackson stood up, nodding stiffly. “Find a connection between the four women. Do it quietly. We don’t need the press sniffing about…”

“You’ve got it,” Jackson said.

Reid took a breath and sighed; he was, of course, discomfited by the fact that so many women had been killed so similarly in such a short span of time. And his own mind had gone to that conclusion, the same one at which Jackson had arrived. But he could not say it. He would not allow it.

 _Not on my streets_ , he thought. _Not again_.

Jackson, who was leaned against his workbench at Reid’s side, folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, friend… now that you’re back on your old beat…”

Reid looked up; he cocked an eyebrow. “Hm? My old beat?”

“Well yeah,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask… with you being back and all… working under Drake… having been gone for three years…”

“What of it?”

“Well how are you holdin’ up, I suppose. Jesus…” Jackson said. “Forget I asked.”

Reid felt instant regret. “I’m sorry,” Reid said. He looked around him. “It’s only that the room has changed but the cases remain." He pressed his hands into fists at his side, digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands. "Three years has not blunted the keen edge of this borough.”

Jackson nodded. “More people flood in every day,” he said. “For every poor bastard who dies, three more take his place. And it’s not like we were swimming in opportunities for them all before this, neither.”

“Quite right,” Reid said, his voice soft.

“But,” Jackson pushed himself off the workbench, gesturing to his technologically-advanced room. “New equipment. New tools. New insights.” He looked over at Reid. “It’s not like it was back when I first met you. If the Ripper were to strike today, with all this at our disposal…”

Reid was not at all placated by the thought; looking over at the woman on the cold metal slab, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been down this road before, and he didn’t like the destination. “And yet,” he said, crossing the room and sliding her back into the cabinet. “The more things change…”

The unmistakable sound of the disgruntled Inspector Drake filtered into the room then from down the hall. He burst through the doors the very picture of piss and vinegar.

“The more they stay the same,” Jackson muttered as he swiped his hands over his apron. “Mornin’, Inspector.”

Drake did hear him. “If I have to walk through another bleedin’ crowd of religious fanatics on my way into the station, I swear on all that is holy, it’ll take the entirety of H Division to hold me back!”

Jackson let out a low whistle. “You alright there, Benito?”

Drake tugged on the hem of his coat and straightened it, standing upright and squaring his shoulders. “I am very much _not_ alright.”

Reid knew of the crowd Drake spoke of, for Reid himself had had to trudge through the throng himself that morning as well. Every day for the last few weeks, a group of evangelicals had taken to setting up on street corners throughout Whitechapel to lecture and preach on their version of Christianity, drawing ire and condemnation from many. The crowds that assembled around the soapbox were always large—the spectacle of Christian evangelicalism was not something often seen in these crowded streets, saved for Hyde Park and other places where hearts and minds had time and space for the trivialities of religious differences—and there were as many curious onlookers as furious ones. Reid had paid them little mind, even though he found their holier-than-thou attitude to be annoying at best, and reprehensibly rude at worst; on this morning, he’d managed to give them no more than a glance as he’d entered the station.

Now, however, he took a step forward. “Perhaps we should send a few men out to disperse them.”

“That’s the first thing I did when I came through the doors,” Drake said, running a hand over his head. “Peaceful congregation is one thing but they’re likely to incite a riot if they keep this up. Hell’s bells, it’d even be fine by me if they chose _a corner_ , a single corner, on which to set up shop but why on _earth_ do they have to move from day to day, hour to hour?” He was getting irate again. “They’re all of them bloody menaces.”

He took a deep breath. Reid glanced at Jackson, who was barely able to stifle his laughter; leveling his sternest glance, Reid quieted him before he began.

“Bennet,” he said, turning back to his friend. “Has anyone canvassed the neighbourhood about our unknown woman yet? I should like to join them on their rounds...”

Drake lifted his head, still disquieted but on the descending slope of his anger. “You can, and should, but the reason I’m down here is that Mathilda’s upstairs. With Miss Cole.”

Reid’s stomach dropped. “Here?” he asked.

“Who’s Miss Cole?” Jackson asked from behind them. “Edmund Reid, you devil, have you got yourself a girl?”

“Hardly,” Reid furrowed his brow.

“Miss _Norah_ Cole,” Drake cocked an eyebrow at Jackson.

Jackson’s jaw dropped. “The writer?!”

At that Drake smiled. “The very same.”

Reid sighed and tried to explain. “She and Mathilda struck up an acquaintance, and—”

“And now she’s stayin’ in the Reid household while she makes her literary debut in London society.”

Jackson shook his head. “I’m speechless.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Drake muttered.

Thoroughly unimpressed with the level of gaping in the room, Reid leapt into action, stalking across the polished tile and to the doors, out into the hallway towards reception, with his friends hot on his trail.

He found Mathilda and Norah sitting against the wall nearest the door, entertaining a not-insignificant crowd of people, both policemen and civilians, ogling the celebrity visitor, whose photo had been printed in the paper so often over the past few months that she was nearly as recognizable now as the Queen herself. Mathilda saw her father first, and she stood up and apart from the gathering as he approached.

“Hello my darling,” Reid said as they met. “What an unexpected surprise.”

“Norah and I were running errands and taking in the sights, and the station was on the way to the dressmaker’s, and so we—well, no, I cannot tell a lie; it was Norah’s idea— _she_ thought it might be nice to stop in for a visit.”

Reid pursed his lips together in a tight smile as he caught Norah’s eye. She made polite excuses to the crowd and stepped to the side to join him. “Good afternoon, Mr Reid.”

“Miss Cole,” he nodded at her.

Behind him, Jackson cleared his throat. “Aren’t you gonna introduce us?”

Another sigh. Reid turned around and opened the intimacy of their circle to Drake and the American Army Captain. “Miss Cole, may I introduce Detective Inspector Bennet Drake, head of H Division, and Captain Homer Jackson,” he said. “Drake, Jackson, Miss Norah Cole of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Dominion of Canada.”

Drake shook her hand. “It’s an honour to have you in our station house, Miss Cole.”

“The pleasure is entirely mine,” she told him before reaching out to Jackson. “American?”

“Formerly,” Jackson said, taking her hand in his. “Illinois.”

“Wyoming.”

“You don’t say... “ Jackson said, his lopsided grin carving a jaunty line across his face; he was pathologically incapable of _not_ flirting.

Reid found it almost too much to handle, but before he could put a stop to it, he clued in to something Mathilda had said earlier. “Dressmaker?” he asked, turning back to his daughter.

“Yes,” she said. “For the banquet.”

Norah turned to Reid. “It seems the Royal Literary Society is throwing some kind of shindig and apparently I’m a guest of honour.” She rolled her eyes and Reid honestly couldn’t tell if she was putting on airs or was truly taken aback by the notion that someone might want to throw a party in her honour. She continued. “Is it possible there’s a bookseller called… Hatchling, is it?... that might also be a place for literary events are held?”

“Hatchard’s,” Reid corrected. “In Piccadilly.”

Norah smiled. “ _Piccadilly_! Oh how charming! Oh isn’t that just the most lovely word? _Piccadilly_!” she exclaimed as she turned her excitement on her young friend. Norah beamed brightly, caught up in the moment, while Norah shook her head in utter bemusement before dropping back to _terra firma_ with a sigh. “Well, events like _that_ require something far more formal than the clothing I brought with me. I wasn’t expecting _glamour_. Should I have? You know, come to think of it, I don’t even think I _own_ a dress; not much use for them in a mining town in the Canadian Arctic, is there?” she grinned, looking to Mathilda and standing up to her full height, as if she wasn’t already commanding the attention of the entire room. “So we’ve decided to make a day of it and see what we can scare up. That won’t eat through too much of my advance, of course.”

If she were English—a middling sort of person who had finally reached the upper crust; one of the _nouveau riche_ that London society so frequently glared down their nose at—Reid might have thought her uninspiring, a bit flighty. But the earnestness of her expression, the way she truly marveled at the sound of words— _Who does that?_ Reid wondered, genuinely impressed; even he was looking at words differently too—or made the High Arctic sound like a place that simply lacked a banquet hall, as if that was all that separated it from high society… it left him almost speechless. He looked to Drake, first, and then Jackson; they met his eyes, shining back at him, enraptured. He knew he wasn’t alone in this feeling, and he simply and discreetly nodded his head, as if to say: _Yes, she does talk like that all the time._

_In fact, we stayed up until long past midnight talking just last night, so I should know…_

Reid looked down, cleared his throat, and fought the blush in his cheek. “How nice,” he said to Mathilda.

“Don’t worry, Father,” Mathilda chided, putting a hand on his arm. “I’m quite satisfied with the number of fancy dresses I own. I promise I won’t spend a penny—”

“And glad I am to hear it,” he teased, patting Mathilda’s hand before turning back to the rest of the company.

“So this is the station?” Norah asked. “Where you worked on the… um… well, your past cases?”

The three men knew exactly what she was referring to; Drake shuffled his feet before answering. “No, ma’am. I mean, it’s the same location, but the building has been remade. Modernized, if you will.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “It must make policing this area easier to have modern conveniences—I spy a telephone behind the desk, is that right?”

Reid nodded. “Connected to other phones here in the station but also police telephones throughout Whitechapel. Constables need only pick up the nearest handset to ring for assistance now.”

“Amazing,” Norah said with an awestruck shake of her head. “I’ve never used a telephone. Read about ‘em though. No use for one back home, and it’s not like it’s the easiest thing in the world to get up and running, even for a big city police station like yours I bet, so at this pace I reckon we won’t get one until the _nineteen-_ nineties, or whenever the permafrost melts long enough for a decent road to get put in first. We don’t even have a telegraph office yet, though I’m told one is coming.” she nodded. “Until then, it’s smoke signals and yelling really loudly if you want to talk to someone over a long distance.”

Drake let out a quiet laugh that bordered on a giggle; Jackson cleared his throat to speak, but his voice came out thin and warbly. “If you want to see the real _height_ of forensic science, you should check out—”

Reid felt the rising tide of jealousy—a curious feeling, not something he expected or indeed wanted to feel—but was prevented from acting on it by the sound of the door opening, and the sight of an old friend bursting through from the street outside.

“Doctor Frayn?” he asked, turning his attention to her fully and stepping away from the small circle gathered there.

“Inspector Reid,” she said. “I was not expecting to see you here.” She stopped on the outer edge of the little circle they had made; a man—evidently Frayn’s companion, seemingly well-dressed and with an amiable but concerned air—stopped and stood awkwardly just behind her.

Reid observed that she was nervous. She wrung her hands in front of her, and her face was etched—brows knit together, lips downturned, eyes drawn. She was not here for a social call, that much was certain.

“To what do we owe this visit?” he asked, mustering all the seriousness he felt the situation demanded.

Dr. Frayn nodded and swallowed. “I should like to report a missing person…” she said. “One of my staff. A nurse.”

At that, Jackson and Reid stood up straight, exchanging the practiced, covert glances, one lawman to another.

“She did not show up for work yesterday, which was unlike her but I thought it warranted given that she had worked for nearly three weeks straight—we’re very short-staffed, you know…”

“Doctor Frayn,” Reid began, but he didn’t have to say anything more. Frayn blanched. At her sides, her fists were clenched and pale.

“You’ve found her, haven’t you?”

Reid looked down at his own hands. “We cannot be sure without… identification,” he said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the mixture of fascination and horror writ large across his daughter’s face; of more curiosity was the look on Norah’s face. Her expression was entirely unreadable, but her attention had not wavered from the scene in front of her since it began.

Momentarily torn between his split duties, Reid nearly forgot himself entirely. It was Jackson who stepped forward to offer the doctor a next course of action. “If you’ll come with me, Dr. Frayn.”

“Yes,” she said, stepping back and going with him back up the hallway from where they’d come only minutes earlier. Drake made his brief excuse and followed, leaving Reid to his daughter and their houseguest, and the man Dr Frayn had left utterly adrift in her haste to follow the Captain.

Reid applied the same analytic eye to the man that he normally reserved for crime scenes. He seemed uncomfortable in the middle of the room; Reid couldn’t pinpoint the source. He was not too tall, not too imposing, with pale skin occasionally marked by distinctive pox scars; his suit seemed finely made, but upon closer inspection Reid noted that it was a little dated and out of fashion, longer and cut differently than what was currently in style; as he looked closer, Reid even noticed areas where the suit had been patched, repaired or altered as the wearer outgrew it. It was, in all likelihood, the man’s only suit. His shoes were polished but unevenly worn, as though the wearer put more pressure on one foot than the other, as in a limp. They seemed tight on his feet. And his hands, which he wrung in front of his body, were chapped and red, his nails ringed with dirt.

He finally noticed Reid’s appraisal, and it was as if he suddenly remembered himself. He stood up straighter, offered an open expression of friendliness, and took a half-step forward.

“I’m sorry, and you are?” Reid asked.

The man alerted to Reid’s face and offered a hand. “Doctor Cartwright,” he said. “Nathaniel Cartwright.”

 _Another American,_ Reid thought as he shook Cartwright’s hand. “Inspector Edmund Reid, H Division,” he said. “Are you visiting London on holiday?”

“I’m actually on loan,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “From Boston General. Dr Frayn and I did our residencies together here in London, at St Bartholomew's. I’m here to assist with a new venture at her clinic.”

 _Her clinic?_ Reid wondered again, dimly remembering the news that Susan—the original proprietor of Obsidian Clinic—had bestowed the hospital and her properties to Dr. Frayn upon her imprisonment years earlier. “Boston General?” he asked. The young doctor nodded. “What is your specialty?”

“Obstetrics and gynecology.”

Reid looked down at the man’s hands again. _Those are not the hands of a physician… least of all a physician working in women’s medicine…_

“Well,” Reid smiled all the same, eager to hide his suspicions. “Welcome to London, Doctor Cartwright. I am sorry to have met under such circumstances.”

“Thank you,” he said. “As am I. I have heard much about your work here.”

Reid was uneasy now, and more eager to extricate himself from the conversation than he had been before. Mathilda and Norah had taken up positions a bit further away now, offering Red and the visiting doctor a sort of privacy, but Reid used them as his excuse to part company. He straightened up and lifted his chin, and the doctor smiled.

“Perhaps our paths will cross again,” Cartwright said.

 _What an odd thing to say,_ Reid thought as he nodded and smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me…”

Cartwright nodded and stepped back, hat doffed awkwardly in his outstretched hand as he looked to the two women Reid was turning his own attention to.

The off-putting interaction left Reid cold; he focused his attention where it needed to be, but protectively positioned himself, as broadly as he could, between the man behind him and the women in front.

“I must be going,” he said quietly. “Be careful, Mathilda, and mindful of where you are and who is around you.”

“Of course, Father,” Mathilda said with a lilting laugh. “Will it be another late night?”

Reid’s chest caved. “Tilda, I—”

“Do not misread me, Father,” she said. “I’m not upset. You do _such_ good work here. I suppose I can share you on occasion.” She grinned, adding: “Norah and I will get on fine if you are needed here. I only ask because… well I want you to be well. Healthy.”

He cocked his head and regarded his daughter. She reminded him so much of her mother; he wished, not for the first time in recent memory, that Emily could be here to see how their little girl had grown. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, but he knew he would have to do better to _continue_ deserving her.

 _Whitechapel is no place for you_ , he thought as she beamed up at him, and he felt his old anxieties—about returning to this place, to do a favour for a friend, to see justice done—rear up within him. But he hid it all, smiled, reached his hand out to encompass hers; he would not have her worry.

“I shall endeavour to be home by a reasonable hour.”

“And I shall keep a plate of food warm for you,” Mathilda replied.

He brushed the back of his fingertips against her cheek. Then he turned to address Norah. “Enjoy the fruits of the day.”

Norah smiled, her eyes bright. “Indeed I shall,” she said, and with that, they parted.

Reid shut his eyes and groaned, kicking himself. _Fruits of the day? What an idiotic thing to say…_

He waited until they were out the door before turning back to the genteel Massachusetts doctor, still standing in the middle of the lobby. He was not watching them, as Reid had suspected, but his eyes followed the two women out the door as they left, and Reid found himself bristling again. He waited until the man looked his way; then Reid nodded at him. The doctor seemed taken aback, a fact which only strengthened Reid’s resolve to maintain eye contact with the man, an unspoken acknowledgment: _I see you_.

Cartwright nodded in recognition, took two steps back, and found himself a seat along the wall.

Satisfied that the message had been received, Reid turned to the stairs and walked out of the lobby. Pushing his way into the revamped dead room once again, he found a weeping Dr. Frayn clutching a handkerchief against the tip of her nose.

Drake turned to him. “Gemma Proctor,” he said. “Obsidian Clinic nurse these past six months. Recently transplanted from Ireland.”

Reid sighed. “Has she any family we should notify?”

Dr. Frayn shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she said, composing herself. Letting her hands fall, still clasped together, she leveled a gaze at the Inspectors on the other side of the table. “Where was she discovered?”

“In front of Christchurch Spitalfields,” Drake said. “A stone’s throw from your clinic, as a matter of fact.”

Dr. Frayn cast a glance to the woman’s body in front of her. “Gemma,” she whispered.

“Had Miss Proctor mentioned any… quarrels recently? People she had angered, or who would want to do her harm?”

Dr. Frayn shook her head. “If you knew Gemma, you’d know she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “Not even a spurned lover?” he asked. “A disgruntled patient perhaps?”

“What is it you think we do, Captain Jackson?” she whirled on him. “The men and women we see are grateful for our help. Disgruntled? How?”

“I mean no offense, Dr. Frayn,” a chastised Jackson replied.

“We only wish to leave no stone unturned,” Reid continued.

She sighed but said no more on that subject; instead she took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, once again finding her composure. “I should like to give her a proper burial.”

Reid bowed his head. “You shall, Doctor. As soon as possible.”

With one final, gentle touch to the linen sheet covering her friend, Dr. Frayn stood up straight and marched from the room, and for a long moment the three men said nothing to each other.

It was Reid who broke the silence. “That man who came in with her, upstairs…” he said, trailing off and not finishing his thought.

“Who was he?” Jackson asked.

Reid furrowed his brow. “He claims to be a visiting physician, working with Doctor Frayn at the clinic,” he said, adding: “American.”

Drake huffed. “I don’t like Americans,” he snarled. Then he cast an apologetic glance at Jackson. “Present company sometimes excluded.”

Jackson curled his lip. “Much obliged, Inspector.”

Reid wasn’t paying much attention. “I didn’t like the look of him.”

“Well when have you ever _not_ suspected someone of wrongdoing upon first meeting, Reid?” Jackson asked with a smile. “You’re the most naturally suspicious person I’ve ever had the distinct pleasure of meeting. I think it took you a full two months to warm up to me!”

Drake laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, Captain Jackson,” he said. “Reid _never really did_ warm up to you.”

Jackson’s fake laugh mocked them all, from Drake’s insult to the sombre tone of the conversation they’d just had. Reid could only look at the still form of the poor woman, Miss Gemma Procter, lying prone on the cold table in front of them all. He shook his head, unwilling or unable to be a part of the joke under such circumstances.

Something felt off, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. It was Drake who eventually shuffled his feet toward the door.

“Come on, lads. There is work to be done.”

And so Reid buried it down, letting his Inspector lead the way out of the morgue.


	6. Compliments

It was far later than he’d anticipated—close to 9 o’clock—when Reid finally entered his front door. Once shut on the street beyond, he leaned against its rock solidness and sighed. His feet ached from the miles of cobblestones he’d trod canvassing the streets adjacent to their latest crime scene; his neck, tight and tender from hunching over his desk and still aching from his misadventured sleep the night before, throbbed unceasingly beneath his collar. He toed off his shoes, wet and slick with mud, and shrugged off his long coat.

 _Fourteen hours_ , he sighed, scrubbing his eyes as he leaned his head against the door. _And we’re no closer to fixing or solving anything…_

Three years away had been enough to make him forget this part of the job, and he was loathe to admit it. Reid had allowed himself to be wooed back to Whitechapel by the thrill of policing—of getting his man, of seeing justice done, order restored—and that thrill had overshadowed the reality of the job; there were more days like _this_ than there were days like _that_ , and he knew that better than anyone.

Making matters worse, he’d hauled his daughter away from the seaside, bringing her directly back into the heart of the place he’d been trying to escape. And he’d tried to escape it for her sake, too. But the realities of this case had hit home, and his own inability to divine the conclusion made it seem all for naught.

They'd been back for but a few months, and the ocean was like a lifetime ago and so far away from where he stood now.

Pushing his way into the entry hall, Reid caught his reflection in the small mirror beside the door, out of force of habit as much as anything. The man staring back at him was barely recognizable. He smoothed his hair back and let his fingertips linger on the sallow bags beneath his eyes. There was nothing left of the vitality that had so recently infused in his face; he knew that it had fled his body, as well, replaced by the weight of London once more upon his shoulders. He was tired. He knew he looked tired.

 _It was Miss Cobden whose plea drove us to the seaside, and Miss Goren’s that brought us back_ , he thought. _How much more of my life’s path will be charted out by admonitions from former lovers?_

But then he gave a rueful laugh. _I think we can rule that all out entire_ , he told himself. _What lovers could possibly be drawn to you now?_

His stomach grumbled, and Reid remembered himself. He heaved a sigh and tore his eyes away from the mirror. The house smelled of spices, and Reid followed his nose into the kitchen where—true to her word—Mathilda had left a plate of food on the cast iron skillet, beneath an iron lid, on a grate over top of the still-warm coals of an earlier fire. Careful to avoid burning himself, Reid pulled the plate from the pan and filled his stomach with roast beef, boiled carrots, soft potatoes and turnips; he even helped himself to a glass of ale to wash it all down, and relished the loose warmth it spread through his veins. It was a rare treat to finish the day with a drink, one he allowed himself tonight in order to bring on the sluggish sleep he so desperately craved.

Before sleep could claim him, however, Reid sat himself by a newly-stoked and roaring living room fire to read the day’s newspapers, to wind himself down. It had been a tradition he’d started when he and Emily had first married; when the work day was over and the tasks and chores of the home had been finally tended to and put to rest, husband and wife would settle in front of the fire, Emily with her cross-stiching or knitting or a cherished book in her lap, Edmund with his papers. Though Emily’s chair—it would always be _her_ chair, he realized, no matter how many years passed between her death and the present moment—now sat empty, Reid couldn’t help but to sink into his routine, night after night. Adding to the ale already free-floating through his system, he poured a finger of scotch into a glass. And while he sipped the wheat-yellow elixir, he settled in as he’d done for too many nights to count, and read about the events of the day that had just passed him by.

But even a pint of watery ale and one finger—then a second—of the finest scotch he could buy on a policeman’s salary couldn’t slough the day from his shoulders. He listened to the silence of the house; it felt cold, colder than usual. After the long day he’d had, he’d have liked company, conversation. Nights in Hampton-on-Sea had been for Mathilda; they’d talk about ideas, about their days. Now, increasingly, Mathilda worked late, or he worked late, and the missed each other, only catching up by the early morning sun. So he could hardly blame Mathilda, or Norah for that matter, for hastening to bed; he had promised to be home early, and he had broken that by more than a few hours.

Still.

He’d been looking forward to another fireside chat with the Wanderer, now presumably dreaming away in the upper reaches of his home.

The thought of her set his mind to spinning. He wondered what she was dreaming about; he wondered what she looked like, her head resting on her pillow, her hair fanned out against the linens; he wondered if she talked in her sleep, and if she did, what was it she said; he wondered what her voice would sound like in the close intimacy of her bedchamber… what she would look like in the warm glow of candlelight and firelight, with her eyes closed and lips parted and her warm skin against his...

He was, therefore, understandably alarmed when—mere minutes into his nightly peace—the front door to the home opened wide, letting a cold draft from the street outside rush into the front parlour.

“Hello?” he called out, folding the newspaper in his lap to hide his growing and evident embarrassment.

Just as he’d done the night before, he expected that Mathilda would answer him, and he prepared his standard speech about how much he disliked the long hours she spent working, how he wished she would stay home after dark. But it was to his great surprise that Norah stepped into his line of sight. Sheepish and blushing, she hung her head.

“Rats,” she muttered, almost under her breath. “I thought you’d still be at work.”

Reid kept a hand on the newspaper, ashamed of his wandering mind which had no reason not to circle back to the previous image of her—beautifully prone and in the throes of passion—as she stood in front of him on the threshold of the room. An old fear of his from childhood—that perhaps everyone else had the ability to read his mind and could know what he was thinking about them in any given moment—resurfaced; he nearly broke a sweat trying to change his line of thinking, forcing it to just about anything else: _Snow… bare trees… train whistles… ten toes flexing into the floor…_

“I didn’t want to make you cross with me, Mr. Reid,” she said, breaking into his thoughts. “You _did_ ask me not to go for late night walks and, well, I’ve gone and done just that.”

“S-so I see,” he stammered.

She wore the same trousers as before but a darker blouse beneath her winter coat, already half-unbuttoned as she stood on the threshold of the room. With a shake of her head to free her hair from the confines of her woolen scarf, droplets of melted snow flung themselves from the ends, caught in the firelight like tiny sparks sent out every which way from the peculiar glow of _her_.

Reid could scarcely hear anything aside from the rushing of blood in his eardrums.

“You _are_ cross with me then?”

“No,” he uttered. “Not cross.” _Never cross…_

_How could I be?_

She smirked at him. “I’ve disturbed you, I see. I’ll just go on up to bed and—”

The thought of her leaving, now, after he’d been alone and so desirous of company—even if he couldn’t keep his mind civil—was too much to bear. “You’ve not disturbed me, Miss Cole,” he said, hoping that the edgy panic he felt in his chest wasn’t apparent in his voice. “You’re welcome to sit.” When she didn’t immediately join him, Reid clipped a sharp inhale. “In fact, I insist: you must sit, at least long enough to scare off that damp chill.”

Norah nodded, hesitant in her agreement, and as she slowly took up the seat across from him, Reid was only too aware of how this looked, the symbolism of it.

 _Emily’s chair_ …

 _Edmund Reid, stop it this instant_ , he chastised himself.

She reached her hands—cold, red, chapped and worn from the necessary toil of work and ink-stained from writing—toward the firelight. “What’s in the news today?” she asked.

Reid glanced at the paper beside him. “The usual.”

“Gossip, slander, sensationalism?”

A small smile crept onto Reid’s face. “Something like that,” he said, folding his hands in his lap—still cautiously embarrassed, though his _condition_ had lessened. “Did you find anything interesting on your walk?” Norah nodded thoughtfully. “Mathilda tells me she is working on Mr. Booth’s survey, is that right?”

Reid confirmed it. “It is challenging work, but she is good with numbers and figures, and has done well in her census-taking since we returned.” He looked up at her and found her eyes engaged, her body leaned forward expectantly. He cleared his throat. “I do worry that her compassionate nature may make her task more difficult however.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” Norah argued. “Her compassion is her best asset.”

“How so?”

Norah's reply was matter-of-fact. “Anytime you reduce a population of people to mere numbers on a page, marks on a map, you risk similarly reducing the _people_ _themselves_. But the reality is that they are still _people_. And Mathilda has enough heart to understand that, to know the difference between the names and numbers in her book and the people she speaks to.”

Reid had never thought about it in that way, but in this light, he couldn’t help but see the logic. He smiled tightly, gave a short nod in acknowledgement of her assessment of his daughter, wondering what it meant that he’d never seen it that way himself.

Norah looked back at him, searching his face for understanding; her eyes softened. “Pardon me for saying so, because maybe it ain’t my place, but… well, last night you said—" she shook her head and stopped speaking.

"I said?"

He watched as her face reddened. "You said Mathilda was her mother’s daughter," she said. "And—again, please pardon my saying this. I don’t mean to offend—but… well I believe she is just as much her father’s daughter as anything else." At that, Norah shrugged, barely; when she spoke her final addendum, it was a nearly a whisper. "And I just thought you should know that.”

Reid was stunned; for a moment he wasn’t sure what to say in return. It was the greatest compliment he could have received. When he did find his voice, it was thick, clouded with emotion. “We were parted for so long, Mathilda and I, and there was _such_ a gulf between us… we are still learning about each other, you see, and—” he stopped, choking up suddenly. “Excuse me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Reid held up a hand to stop her and let it fall to his knee. “No, Miss Cole—thank you for saying so.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his posture. “I confess I see so much of her mother in her, and after all she and I have endured… I did not expect nor did I ever seek to find evidence of myself living there as well…”

“Oh but there is,” she said, earnestness clinging to her every word. “I can tell what kind of man you are just by the way she speaks about you. What values you cherish, the standards to which you hold the people closest to you and how they meet them with your guidance… there _is_ so much evil and darkness in this world, Mr. Reid, but you—you are a shining beacon. A sign of who we should strive to be, and I didn't need to meet you to know that. I only needed to listen to your daughter's praise of you.” She smiled. “To hear her say it, you hung the moon."

Never before had he heard himself—indeed, not anyone—described in such a manner. He felt undeserving of the praise. _If only you knew me better_ , he thought…

"I don't know what to say," he admitted finally. "Except perhaps thank you..."

Norah smiled, and for a long moment she said nothing; finally, she pressed her advantage. “Mathilda's mother, she is…?”

“She is passed,” was all Reid said. “Some six years hence.” He paused, but not for any reason other than he didn’t know what to say next. “She never believed as I did that Mathilda might still be alive, and she died without knowing that it was true.”

“I’m so sorry,” Norah replied.

Reid half-smiled but didn’t continue. Neither did Norah. Once again, she reached her hands out toward the flames. The droplets of meltwater on her hair were gone; her rosy cheeks were all that remained to tell of her Whitechapel foray.

Reid desired to change the subject. “Your walk,” he began. “Did you go very far?”

"Not very," she said. “Far enough to understand the makeup of these streets. There are… so many _people_ out there, Mr. Reid.”

She said it like it was a revelation that she had only just discovered rather than a reality that he had been dealing with for the better part of his adult life. But in so saying it, she had managed to transform the place he lived and worked in and lived and died with every moment of every day into a place of wonder, somehow. He marveled at her ability to do so.

_First words, now places. What else will your magic transform in front of my eyes?_

Norah continued. “I don’t mean just the _volume_ of people either. I mean… people from all walks of life. So many languages! And the experiences they’ve had are—” She changed tack. “You know how the staggeringly wealthy—old money, I mean, not those who’ve just struck it rich—well they look like those statues on Easter Island? Stone-faced and cold, not showing any emotion at all. You ever notice that before?”

Reid agreed, but even if he hadn’t, she would have continued; her mouth was already open, and the words tumbling out, regardless of how he would have responded.

“The men and women of these streets are open books. They have lived hard lives and it is written on their faces. Whole novels’ worth. Where they’ve been, what they’ve seen…”

“It’s true,” he offered, filling the space at the end of her sentence with his own voice.

“And you protect them.”

Reid rubbed the pad of his right thumb over the back of his left hand. “I try.”

Norah leaned back and Reid was aware of, once again, falling under her scrutiny. He tried not to notice it, but it proved impossible. The fire light cast a flickered glow across her face, in turn lengthening and then lightening the shadows of her face, so that even though she sat stock-still, the illusion of movement enlivened her features. He couldn’t help but be drawn in, drawn to the quirked eyebrow and drawn to the inquisition in her lips, poised around a question she didn’t yet know how to ask; drawn to the pooled depths of her irises, and the burnished copper of her hair, fanned out in unkempt wisps from her head as if she were part of the fire burning beside them both…

“Why do you do it?”

“Why do I do what?” he asked, his voice catching on the words.

“Work for the police force in an area such as this?”

Reid shook his head partly because it seemed a strange question but partly because he didn’t have an answer and he knew he should. It was as much an admonishment of his own lack as anything else. “It is, I suppose, a challenge.” He hated that it made this sound like a game; it wasn’t. “Like it would be anywhere.”

“But certainly a bigger challenge than, say, Kensington and Chelsea?”

Reid couldn’t help but grin, though he tried to hide it; it amused him to think of this woman, a world away from the wild world which was the only one she knew, studying the boroughs of London and knowing which ones to bring up in contrast to his. Still, he nodded his head. “It’s… different.”

He could see that it wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Far from it. She fidgeted side to side, and it was as if he could see the gears spinning in her head.

“But I would think that a man of your esteem would be able to have any commission he wanted,” she said. “And yet Mathilda tells me you came out of retirement, as it were, as a favour to a friend.”

Reid flexed his hand, flicking his fingernail with his thumb. "I go where I am needed," he said. "And I was needed here."

Norah smiled. “Sometimes I think the best of us are drawn to the worst,” she offered. “Not that this area is the worst, I mean… it’s just that… well, with what has happened here, the history here—”

Seeing Norah tongue-tied was an interesting moment; he had the distinct impression that it didn’t happen often. He put his keen detective’s eyes to work and sized her up. “You want to ask me about the Ripper.”

Her eyes met his. “I don’t mean to pry.”

“It’s true that I don’t usually like to talk about it—”

“Then we don’t need to talk about it.”

He steepled his fingers and adjusted his own posture. “What is it you want to know?”

Norah was not prepared for him to agree to speak to her. She drew in a breath. “Well,” she said. “I have so _many_ questions, I don’t know where to start!” She chewed on her lip, drawing it between her teeth as she narrowed her eyes and scanned the depths of her memory for the right opening query. “What was it like, you know, chasing an unknown killer through these streets?” she started, and once she started, she couldn’t let up. “When did you first know it was a repeat killer? How did you identify suspects? Why were you unable to catch him? Who do you think it was, ultimately, who committed these dark deeds?”

Reid swallowed and chuckled, in that order. “You may need to write those down…”

Norah smiled. “I told you there were a lot.”

But Reid was undeterred. He furrowed his brow and looked at the fire, then back at his hands. “We didn’t know until the second of the five, Annie Chapman, that we were dealing with a repeat killer. There were others before that, before even Polly Nichols, who may have been victims of the same hand—”

“Really?”

Reid nodded. “But death is no stranger to these streets, and it is an unfortunate truth that even the most horrific of deaths can often… blunt the edge of one’s sensibility, as it were.”

“You get used to it?”

“Precisely,” he said. “And unfortunately.” Reid tried to remember her other questions. “We had help from the public to identify suspects. There were eyewitnesses in some cases. Some more reliable than others. Vigilance committees were also set up, and though we never encouraged it they did provide us with some useful information at times. And after Catherine Eddowes’ murder, when London Police became involved, a reward was offered by the government for information. But it all led to naught.”

“And eventually he stopped killing?”

“Or we caught him for something else and he rots in a prison cell, or he died by his own hand or misadventures elsewhere, or he left London entirely to take up his hellish pastime elsewhere.” Reid opened his hands, palms up. “I know not, and it pains me greatly to say that.”

“But who do you think it was?”

Reid’s mind went back over the list of suspects—butchers, doctors, men of standing and those of ill-repute—and shook his head. “The Devil himself, I believe.” It was the only true answer.

Norah rested her head in her hand, gawping at him. “I daresay if I saw half of what you’ve seen, I’d never sleep a wink again.”

Reid managed a dark laugh. “Perhaps this is why I sit up by the fire when most are tucked away in their beds.”

And then Norah tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek against the upraised knuckles of her left hand. “Well,” she spoke, her words resting on her exhale. “I’ve only known you for a matter of days and…” a pause. She blinked her eyes tiredly. “I believe Whitechapel is lucky to have you.”

She turned away then, and if Reid didn’t know better he would have thought she was blushing; she’d said too much, tipped her hand. It gave Reid significant pause as he considered her; still, ever the gentleman—interior thoughts be damned—he simply nodded his head in curt recognition as he thanked her, again, for her second compliment of the evening. And then he changed the subject.

“But tell me, Miss Norah Cole of Dawson City, what interest have you in the goings on of a Metropolitan Police district? Surely the day to day activity on the Canadian frontier are far more… _exciting_.”

“Exciting in a very different way. We don’t have mysterious killers roaming our streets—we have moose instead.”

Reid’s eyes widened—he’d never seen a moose, couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to see one in person—but he quickly observed that Norah’s smile was genuine but uneasy.

“Oh, sure, there’s a charm, a _whimsy_ , to the wilderness that I don’t think I could live without, I freely admit that,” she said. “But… nature and society are at such odds that I wonder if there is any way to reconcile the two, at least in this particular instance.”

Intrigued, Reid leaned forward. “How so?’

She had been leaning her cheek against her hand this whole time; but as his question registered, she sat up straight and narrowed her eyes, looking inwardly for the words she needed. “‘ _Man must be willing to lay down his right to all things and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself._ ’”

Reid exhaled. “Thomas Hobbes,” he said. “The Social Contract.”

“I might have paraphrased,” she replied, shrugging before a playful flicker flashed across her eyes. “You’re surprised. Is it because you can’t imagine a backwoods gold prospector to be well-versed in 17th century political philosophy, or is it because I’m a _woman_ well-versed in 17th century political philosophy?”

Reid felt not a small amount of insult at the accusation of bigotry; he squared his shoulders and chin in defiance. But then shame hit, because she was right; he _had_ been surprised. The question of why would have to be examined later; for now he blustered through a denial. “I didn’t mean—”

Norah just laughed. “Oh dear, it seems I’ve teased you too far, Mr. Reid.”

“Still…” he started. “You invoke Hobbes. I’m afraid I don’t follow…?”

The light left Norah’s face as she seemed to deflate, just enough to notice but not enough for comment. “We all have angels living within us, and we all have devils. It’s the work of a lifetime to hope to keep the two in balance, and most of us succeed most of the time. But sometimes—” She paused, and Reid observed her chewing the corner of her lower lip, but this time not in curious examination but rather in anxiety. Mesmerized, he watched her work. Caught in the flickering light of the fire, her lip glistened, first with saliva and then, as she continued to worry it back and forth between her teeth, blood; drawing her lip fully between her teeth, she seemed startled, and shook her head.

Reid was not afforded the luxury of accepting the action at face value. _Who chews their own lip to the point of injury?_ he wondered. The list of reasons for it—fear, nerves, holding back words—surprised him. He’d known Norah for two days, a handful of hours, and these were not emotions and actions he would have expected from her; a Wanderer, a woman of adventure and the ability to survive under the harshest of circumstances, someone with startling clarity of vision and the means to express her inner thoughts so well should be above such feelings of hesitation, no?

And yet here she was, twice in the course of one conversation, _hesitating_.

But even if he could have found a way to probe further, he didn’t get the chance. Norah abruptly stood up. “Oh, but this is dark conversation best left for another time.”

Reid bumbled to his feet, which felt curiously numb as he stood in front of her; he nearly toppled forward into the space between them, and the newspaper fell from his lap. He forgot entirely why he had it there in the first place, and stared at it on the floor for what felt like a lifetime.

“Goodnight, Mr. Reid.”

“Edmund,” he said, unthinkingly, before lifting his eyes to meet hers once again.

Her entire mannerism changed in the span of milliseconds; her face brightened, softened, all the harsh lines and worry evaporating like the droplets of water from her hair. Suddenly, he desired nothing more than for her to use his Christian name, needing—desperately—to hear it from her lips.

She obliged him with a small smile—” _Edmund_ …”—and it was nearly his undoing.

 _Oh, that’s why_ … he thought, a creeping shameful blush warming his throat and the hollows of his cheeks as he toed the fallen newspaper out of the way.

“Goodnight… Edmund.”

“Goodnight Norah,” he whispered as she took her leave.

That night—in spite of his fatigue, with her sleeping mere feet away, separated by two doors and a wall so thin he thought if he listened close enough he could hear her breathing—Reid found himself scarcely able to rest at all. For the second night in a row, he tossed and turned, uncomfortable in his own skin.

Only when he took matters into his own hands—quite literally, quietly, and in the private darkness of his room sometime long after the downstairs clock chimed the stroke of midnight—was he able to grasp onto the last remaining dregs of both the night and his own propriety and tumble into slumber.

He wondered how he’d be able to look Norah in the face again.

But, for the time being, that was Future Edmund’s problem…


	7. Quiet Riots

Mathilda met her father at the breakfast table the next morning; a bowl of warm porridge awaited him.

“Good morning,” she said, taking in the sight of him. Her face fell, heavy with concern. “Did you not sleep well?”

“No,” he replied, scrubbing a hand along his jaw, feeling where he’d missed a spot while shaving. “No, I did not.”

Mathilda clucked her tongue—a gentle scolding that reminded him so much of her mother that it nearly took his breath away—and poured him a mug of coffee from the percolator on top of the stove. “You were up talking with Miss Cole, weren’t you?”

Reid scanned his daughter’s face for signs that his feelings towards their houseguest had been sussed out; whatever she thought of the situation, it was hidden behind her smile. “Yes, I was.” He sat up straight. “Did we wake you?”

“Well, I heard you talking, if that’s what you mean” she said, glancing up at him with a smile. “I am glad you are so fond of her. She has quickly become one of my fondest friends.” She paused briefly. “I admire her so much, for all that she has been through and all she has managed to do, in the face of so much opposition.”

Reid nodded; of course he agreed. But he measured his response, tamping down his own eagerness. “She is a remarkable woman.”

“So _accomplished_ and _capable_ ,” Mathilda continued, pouring herself a cup of coffee— _When did she start drinking coffee?_ Reid wondered.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Quite accomplished.” He took a sip from his mug.

Mathilda paused to drink from her own mug. “And beautiful.”

At that, he nearly spat out what was in his mouth, glancing back at the stairs and hoping against hope that Norah was not eavesdropping, that his daughter’s voice was not carrying up to the second floor through the thin walls of their home.

Mathilda laughed.

“I-I... I hadn't noticed,” he lied, finally, as he regained his composure.

She rolled her eyes. “Father…”

Reid hoped that his averted gaze and the flush in his cheeks would be missed by his only child. “Nonsense, Mathilda,” he said, stirring some sugar into his coffee, in spite of the fact that he never took his coffee sweetened.

She sat back and observed him silently, and Reid knew that she knew and that he wasn't fooling anyone. He set the spoon down, his shoulders sagging just a little, but just enough.

“You know…" Mathilda began again, quietly contemplative. "Three years away from London, away from your work and your friends…” 

“What of it?”

She pursed her lips, looking for the words, or mustering the courage to speak them at all. “I know you put so much on hold, and I know you did it for me. To help me. And I am beyond grateful to you for it." She slid her hand across the table, resting it atop his own. "But… well I should like to see you… settled. And happy.”

Reid turned his hand over closed his fingers around hers, palm to palm. “I _am_ happy. Here, with you... my darling Tilda,” he said, leaning forward. “Why should you think otherwise?”

But Mathilda clucked her tongue and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Reid furrowed his brow, partly in jest but also because he was displeased with her lack of manners; it did little to stop her.

“I mean happy in the way that _men_ can be _happy_ ," she said. "Happy in the way that Uncle Ben and Rose are happy. The way I hope… one day… I might be happy.”

At that, Reid’s eyes snapped to hers. It was hard to ignore the fact that his little girl was a woman now—and one with designs on a young H Division policeman; he’d noticed the flirtation between Mathilda and Sgt Drummond, as had virtually everyone in their small circle of friends and acquaintances. But even so, he was not ready for the inevitable. He had only just gotten her back; he couldn’t give her away so soon. The thought made his heart plummet.

“Mathilda—”

She leaned back in her chair and interrupted him before he had a chance to formulate his thoughts at all. “So I am happy for you, Father, that Norah is providing such excellent company,” she said, adding quickly: “And I give my blessing.”

“Your blessing?” Reid replied, his eyebrows shooting up in bemused shock.

She nodded, a smug smile on her face, and for a long moment father and daughter squared off across the dining table. It was he who brokered the eventual detente, smiling as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips once again. “Mathilda Reid…”

The coffee was too sweet and they both knew it; he scowled as it filled his mouth, and though he swallowed it down, he knew he would never finish it. Mathilda pushed her own mug across the table towards him and took his from him—a trade; how many times had he done the same for her, when she was a small child? Given her the best slice of pie or the last scoop of pudding? His heart bloomed in his chest as she stood up and came around to his chair, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. He tenderly patted her shoulder.

“You’re going to be late for work,” she said before she bustled from the room.

Reid sighed, chuckled to himself, and attacked the bowl of porridge with his spoon.

* * *

“I’d give anything for a bit of action around here,” Jackson said through a yawn.

It was a slow day, and by lunchtime everyone knew it. They’d had two minor incidents—a fight at a market stall over produce had escalated into an injurious brawl, and a domestic dispute that had boiled over into the street from The Brown Bear caused two men and a woman to require drying out before they could be released again to the streets of Whitechapel. The policemen on their beats reported nothing but good cheer wherever they went. Even the minor inconvenience caused by the religious congregation still moving through the streets was held off, for the most part, because the people around them paid them little to no mind, unlike previous days when they’d caused much more commotion.

“Perhaps it’s the Christmas spirit,” Drake had wondered aloud.

“Or everyone’s drunk on spiced rum and egg nog,” was Jackson’s reply, adding: “I’ll never understand why you people spoil brandy in such egregious fashion… it’s enough that your beer is served at the same temperature as the room you drink it in, but then you mix poultry into it…”

"And over in the colonies you lot spoil it with rum," Drake had said in response.

"Well I was never much of a rum drinker, and if you ever came out to the public house with me after work, darlin', you'd know that."

"Call me darlin' again and it won't be a public house but a morgue you'll be headed to," Drake jokingly menaced.

That was the last anyone had spoken, and it had been more than an hour ago.

The three men sat around the bullpen, shuffling their papers, pretending to not be bored. Reid sighed and glanced at his watch; it was a quarter past one. He rubbed his eyes. “I might go for a walk,” he said through a yawn. “Stretch my legs.”

“Oh, speaking of walks,” Drake said, looking up, and both Jackson and Reid turned their eyes to him, eager for whatever news he was about to bring, no matter how mundane the subject. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this—PC Nichols told me that he saw your Miss Cole out wandering the streets last night.”

Reid shook his head. “She is hardly _my_ Miss Cole, Bennett,” he said, feeling his hackles rise. “She couldn’t sleep. Of course I told her of the dangers of our East End streets, but—”

"And you didn't think to accompany her?"

"She left before I came home," he replied. "As I said, I had warned her about going out alone, but she did so anyway, and I believe she was trying to avoid detection by me, and..."

"Well next time she wants to go, you let her know I'd be happy to have her on my arm," Jackson drawled. "Can't go around keeping a filly under lock and key, Reid, it just ain't done." 

Reid took a breath. “She’s a capable woman, I do not deny that,” he said, determined to change the subject. “In fact, I worry more about you after you’ve been imbibing than I do about her out walking alone.”

Jackson teased a smile. “ _You_ worry about _me_?”

“When the mood strikes,” was Reid’s reply.

“Are you two about done flirting?”

They both looked at Drake, who sat with a smirk on his own face.

“I ask after Miss Cole because she was reportedly seen visiting Doctor Frayn at the Obsidian Clinic.”

 _Obsidian?_ Reid thought. It was a surprise, but he wasn’t about to let on. “I suppose it is natural that she should gravitate there, given that Doctor Frayn is a pioneer in the world of medicine and Miss Cole is—”

“Literally a pioneer,” Jackson finished.

Drake shrugged. “I only mention it because it was late, and the clinic _was_ closed,” Drake said. “And their conversation was quite… _hushed_. Nichols thought it a little suspicious, and given Doctor Frayn’s association to the woman on _your_ mortuary table—” he leveled a finger at Jackson before continuing. “And I just thought you might want to know about it.”

“I’m not her keeper,” Reid said, his voice teetering on the edge of indecipherability, but enough that it effectively ended the conversation. The men went back to their hushed silence. But Reid was far from satisfied; Drake’s news had given him a slight pause. Knowing what he knew about Dr. Frayn’s close ties to a murdered woman, and Norah's closer-than-expected ties to Frayn... it all made him worry.

“Well since we’re on the subject of murdered women anyway,” Jackson said, removing his feet from the edge of Reid’s desk and leaned forward, opening the notebook he’d been reading flat on the desk in front of him, and purposefully thumbing its pages. “While we’ve been sittin’ here enjoyin’ each other’s breathing, I was going back over my notes from these last few weeks… looking for things I missed, more ways to tie these murdered women together, aside from the manner of death…” he found what he was looking for and jabbed his index finger into the page. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure what it is I’m thinking, and I’m not yet, but… well…”

“Out with it, Jackson,” Drake said.

Jackson looked them both in the eye. “Did you know each of the three women before Nurse Gemma here had recently been pregnant?”

Reid furrowed his brow and reached over across the desk, taking the book from Jackson’s hand and scanning the page where Jackson had been pointing. The man’s scrawled script was barely legible, but Reid squinted and made out what he could: _Pelvic exam reveals recent pregnancy._

“Go forward two pages.”

Reid did as he was told. Drake joined him at his side. Sure enough, the second victim: _Recently pregnant; possible miscarriage._

“All three?”

“Except Gemma,” Jackson said. “Which does make me wonder…”

"How did we miss this?" Drake asked.

Jackson shrugged. "It was only yesterday that we started putting this together..."

"What do you think it means?" Reid asked, though he'd already started formulating his own hypotheses. _Pregnant women... a nurse from Obsidian Clinic... all murdered..._

But before anyone had a chance to respond, a commotion downstairs drew all three men’s attentions away from the notebook and their discussion. Drake was the first one out the door, with Reid and Jackson close on his heels.

In the lobby of the Leman Street police station, a brawling group of about fifteen rioters had been hauled in before the booking desk, and every available sergeant and constable was busy breaking up the fights that were now enveloping the station’s main floor.

“What’s goin’ on here?!” Drake bellowed.

“Riot, sir,” Sgt. Drummond replied as he manhandled someone into the corner of the room away from another man holding a sandwich board declaring the end of civilization and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. “Seems our religious-minded friends have been stirring the pot again.”

Reid wedged himself in between two men exchanging words near the doors to the basement dead room, narrowly avoiding being hit by their swinging fists as he wrestled them away from one another.

“Hey Reid,” Jackson barked. “Remember when I said I wished for some action to liven up the day?”

Reid ducked another mislaid punch and pinned the thrower against the wall. “What about it?” he growled.

Jackson ducked a punch himself, and pinned a third man to the wall behind him. “This wasn’t what I had in mind.”

 _Indeed_ , Reid thought to himself. The peace and stillness of their afternoon, broken only minutes before, felt like an entire lifetime removed from the current moment, and all the attendant troubles that had plagued him over the nocturnal whereabouts of Norah Cole were entirely forgotten.

*

The afternoon had passed by with such speed and Reid was so busy handling the arrests and bookings of the brawlers that the sun had long set before Reid was able to take a breather and realize what time it was. His stomach growled in protest as he looked down at his watch; it was nearly six in the evening. Supper time. He sighed and pushed his fingers into his eyes, scrubbing the day from his face and sleep from his eyes.

“Go home,” Drake said.

“No,” he sat up straighter. “I’ll be alright.”

Drake leaned back in his chair. "Did you sleep at all last night?”

Reid almost chuckled. "Is that your way of telling me I look like hell?" he asked, yawning in response. “No, I didn't sleep, or at least not particularly well.” He sighed. “That’s two nights in a row now, no more than about three hours each.”

At that, Drake stood up and walked across the bullpen to where Reid hung up his long overcoat and bowler hat. Reid sighed as his friend walked back across the room and handed him his things. “Go. Home,” he insisted. “You’re no good to me in this condition and I reckon you know it, too.”

Reid wanted to argue, but it felt like an order; he pushed himself up and took his things from Drake. “I’ll be in early to finish this up,” he said.

“No need,” he said. “Take the day off. Sleep in, for heaven’s sake. And then show Miss Cole around London.”

Reid reluctantly shouldered his way into his coat. “I’ve already taken a day this week.”

Drake paused, and as Reid put on his coat he noticed the same look of hesitation on his face that he'd seen on Mathilda's that morning. _Am I that hard to talk to that people need to consider their words this carefully?_

"What is it, Bennet?"

The Inspector took a breath. “How many years have we worked together?”

Reid pretended to think about it; in reality, he had no idea. “Many,” was his eventual reply.

“And I can probably count on one hand how many days off you’ve taken in all those _many_ years.”

Reid sighed. "I hardly think that's the point," he said, once again plunged his fingers into his eyes. “There’s so much work to do…”

"And it will be done."

"Yes, because I intend to see it done."

Drake again hesitated to answer. “Edmund," he began. "I know it has not been easy for you to step back into your old shoes but now working under your old Detective Sergeant.”

Reid shook his head in protest, mildly annoyed that the suggestion was even being made. “Bennet, honestly—”

“No, Edmund, listen. Please,” he said. “Because I _am_ the head of H Division, and while I am glad beyond measure to have you back, I won’t have our old friendship standing in the way of the work that needs to be done.”

It seemed as though Drake had been rehearsing this speech for a long time, and Reid didn’t want to say anything that would encourage deviation; he needed to say what needed to be said. So, somewhat chastened, Reid nodded. “Entirely sensible.”

Drake soldiered on. “Now we may hold the same rank, but this is _my_ house now, and I can’t be seen treating you any different than any other,” he said. “So while I won’t order you to stay home tomorrow, I _am_ ordering you to go home tonight.” Having gotten the words out, he stood up straighter, lighter, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “I won’t accept any word to the contrary.”

Reid set his lips in a firm line and looked down at his shoes. This was unfamiliar territory, but he had to admit that he should have seen it coming; after the way things had gone during the Isaac Bloom-Whitechapel Golem investigation, how many toes he'd stepped on, how many people he'd upset by throwing his weight around in an effort to do right by the job, yes, but also for intensely personal reasons. He shouldn't have done that. And he knew he'd upset more people with his return to Whitechapel than he’d anticipated; he halfway wondered if Drake could be counted among them.

He'd have to deal with the fallout of that another time. For now, he acquiesced. “That’s probably the right call,” Reid said softly. “I'm sure I’d have done the same in your shoes.”

“I _know_ you would have,” Drake replied. “Who do you think _I_ learned it from?”

Reid smiled and set his hat on his head. “Well then. Good night, Inspector.”

He turned to leave, taking the stairs slowly, lost in thought. _Perhaps things have changed more than I realize_ , he thought. _So, Edmund, m_ _ind your p’s and q’s. Do the work. Do it well. All will fall into place exactly as it ought to._

Reid turned to leave, and he might have intended on going straight home as requested. But he didn’t make it to the door. Down at the main desk, a young man in plain, unadorned clothes was speaking to one of the evening desk sergeants. When Reid stepped into view, the man alighted, making his way to him.

“Are you Inspector Drake?”

“No,” he replied. “Inspector Reid. And you are…?”

“Ezekiel Prosper,” he said, revealing the full extent of his foreign, slightly southern, American accent. “I am a member of the Holy Church of God, and I believe you have a number of our lambs in your jail cells.”

The man’s voice was calm, even-toned, but cold as morning frost. It stirred uneasiness into Reid’s veins. He stiffened. “And there they will stay until morning,” he said, his voice curt and clipped. “Along with the costermongers who were their rivals in crime during this afternoon’s riot.”

At this point Drake has descended the steps behind Reid. He insinuated himself into the conversation. “What have we here?”

“A Mister _Prosper_ ,” Reid said, making obvious his opinion that the surname was fictitious or at the very least some sort of assumed name. “He is another of the Church of God, whose members were the source of the commotion we had here this afternoon.” Reid gestured at the scuff marks on the wall, the broken paneling on the front desk, and areas of missing plaster from the fights.

“Not to mention the paperwork we’ve just slogged through and will continue with through these long evening hours,” Drake countered, his hands in his pockets as he eyed the man with suspicion. “If you’re here to make amends and pay your share of the damages on behalf of your organization, we’ll gladly accept—”

“We are but penniless pilgrims, recently arrived on your shore to lead those among you who have strayed from the true path back to salvation,” he said, drawing out vowels that dripped with what passed for refined gentility in the American South. “I have nothing to offer but goodwill an’ prayer, except perhaps evidence of a _larger_ crime being perpetrated against your very own citizens.”

Drake scoffed, uninterested; Reid couldn’t help himself.

“What larger crime?”

The man was already reaching into the simple cloth bag slung crossways over his body, and he produced from within it a sheaf of paper, loosely bound, with wrinkled and tattered edges. It took a moment for Reid to recognize them as advertisements of the kind pasted to walls all throughout Whitechapel; some had seemingly been ripped off the walls in haste, their tattered edges loose and flapping with the slightest movement. “Illegalities of so many colours occur on a daily basis here in Whitechapel, as I am sure you are aware. But none are as heinous as _these_.”

Reid took the leaflets, which all seemed to advertise the same thing, if Reid’s understanding of the cryptic language—words like “cleansing”, “irregularities”, and “obstruction”, about women “indisposed” by nature, or referencing lunar cycles—was correct. “Beecham’s Pills? Catholic Pills? Renovating Pills?” he asked, flipping to the next. “Diachylon… _’hickory pickory’_?”

Drake stepped forward to look over Reid’s shoulder. “Those are drugs used in the procurement of—“

“Abortion,” Prosper said. “Yes, they are abortifacients, Inspector, and their use is so widespread on these streets it would indeed shock me to discover that you were not aware of it.”

Reid was well aware; they all were. But he shook his head and handed back the leaflets, uninterested in talking about it with someone demanding and unknown and blocking his way out from his own station house.

“Where did you get these?”

“From vendors an’ stalls an’ public houses an’ meetin’ rooms on Commercial Street an’ Whitechapel Road an’ Petticoat Lane an’ all over this district,” Prosper replied. “It’s happenin’ right under your noses, Inspectors. Services advertised and obtained, with the help of market carts like several of those belongin’ to the fruit an’ vegetable sellers who ruthlessly attacked my congregation this afternoon.”

“But what concern is any of this of yours?” Reid asked, suddenly defensive.

Prosper’s eyes flashed hotly. “The ending of so precious a life as an unborn child’s? It should concern us all,” he said, coating the previous timbre of his words with his scorn. “It is not God’s will that these _whores_ should have their wombs emptied before their time of the sullied fruits of their sinful labour.

Beside him, Drake squared up, spoiling for another fight. Reid, however angry he might have been, would have to be the cooler head willing to prevail. “You pass judgement on people who deserve better than to be burdened with your disapproval, Mr. Prosper,” he said.

The man’s face hardened. “So you agree with the unlawful termination of pregnancy?” he asked. “I should very much like to hear you say so, an’ I’m certain so too would Scotland Yard. I may be but a visitor to these shores, but I know the law of your land prohibits these acts.”

Reid shook his head. “The law is the law, I do not deny that,” he said. “But I should rather see the same full measure of care and devotion you offer to the unborn given to the fully grown children—these _sullied fruits_ , as you call them—that roam our streets, uncared for and unwanted by the parents who bore them. Presumably your _compassion_ extends to them as well?”

Mr. Prosper scoffed and ignored the question. “You cannot compare the crime of murder to the existence of orphans,” he said. “You have not been diligent enough in seein’ justice done. The streets of the East End are awash in filth with no hope for salvation because of actions like these. I could take you t’ ten places where such things are occurring right now. They are much closer than you could ever imagine, and in more ways than one.”

“What do you mean?”

But the man simply shook the leaflets in his hand before shoving them back in his bag. “We are marchin’ for a better world, Inspector. The fight today with these… _costermongers…_ they are aidin’ the enemy, you see, so they might as well _be_ the enemy. They set up stalls outside these dens of iniquity, help them procure customers, with no thought to the _moral_ _purpose_ of their lives, well—to say that the good an’ virtuous men an’ women who have joined my cause are disappointed would be an understatement, but they are undeterred as well...”

The American trailed off but Reid didn’t need to hear any more. He took a step forward, tired beyond his ability to reason; he gritted his teeth. “And where were you today when this medieval morality play was being staged in our station house?” he asked.

Proper’s eyes smiled as he softened his stance, his words, his tone of voice. “Inspector Reid, I was speakin’ to a crowd in Hyde Park when the events of this afternoon were taking place,” he said. “I was sorry t’ hear that it went as far as it did…”

“I’ve two men, good men, in the infirmary with injuries suffered at the hands of those your words have riled up,” said Drake.

“I’m sure those men will agree that God’s will was being done,” Prosper said. “And that their injuries, however grievous, served a higher purpose as we raised awareness of the fight for the very soul of Whitechapel…” he trailed off, but his dark and deep-set eyes continued to dance. “Have you ever wondered, gentlemen, why it was you were visited by such evil as you have been? So much carnage an’ mutilation?”

By this point, Reid had had more than enough; the thinly veiled reference to the Ripper pushed him over the edge. He sucked in a breath and tightened his jaw. “Who are you to come here and bark orders about God’s will? I should arrest you right here for inciting violence on my streets. Are you the leader of this sect?”

“I am but a servant of the Lord,” was the man’s smug reply. “I need not justify my presence to you nor any other mortal man.”

At this Drake also stepped forward. “Well, son, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “You’ve been here, disrupting the peace and quiet of our district, for—what?—a month now? Six weeks? Staging protests and clogging our alleyways, while these people—these people of meager fortune and aspiration whom you see fit to trample underfoot—eke out an existence on crowded streets, in tenement flats, with nary more than the clothes on their backs and the food in their bellies to call their own.” He menaced another step. “Now you try to tell us how to do our job?”

Prosper stood up to his full height. “So you’ll do nothing?” he asked. “Just as you did in the Autumn of Terror?”

Reid felt his hair stand on end; he reached out to Drake, holding him back.

“I strongly suggest you find more lenient pastures in which to graze your flock, Mister Prosper,” Drake said, his voice a hair’s breadth above a whisper. “When your men are released from our custody, we’ll be watching them. And you.”

Ezekiel Prosper simply huffed. “I wish that were true, Inspector Drake,” he said. “But I think you will find there is much about your beat of which you are woefully ignorant. It will take a lot more than a barroom brawl in your lobby to make you see it.” And with that, he took two steps backward away from them before turning and heading to the door, where he disappeared into the night.

It was only then that Reid noticed the desk sergeants watching them, eyes wide, mystified by the encounter.

“Nutter,” Drake mumbled as he sought composure. He straightened his suit jacket. “Spoilin’ for a fight is all.”

Reid flexed his hand, bruised from the fight and starting to feel tight across the knuckles from the swelling.

“I don’t like the look of him,” someone muttered behind Reid at the desk.

Without acknowledging him, Reid lowered his voice. “This is not the first time we’ve handled backstreet abortionists,” he said.

Drake grumbled. “Three years ago,” he said with a slow shake of his head. "I remember."

Reid took a conspiratorial step closer. “In three years, I don’t know what has been done to combat this but… you and I both know that we are not—have never been, maybe could never be—diligent in policing this.”

“And we could put a _hundred_ men out there and never find a single crime,” Drake said. “No reputable doctor or hospital would dare offer the service. No one seeking the procedure would dare tell us so. Policing it is—”

“It may be futile but it _is_ Her Majesty’s law.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

Reid shook his head. Abortion… a terrible thing to have to imagine, but an impossible one to actually remedy, at least with the current state of things.

“We can’t fight every fight, Edmund.” It was as if Drake were speaking his own mind out loud to him.

Reid sighed. “I know that.” And he did. He’d been Head of H Division himself, hadn’t he? This had been his problem, on his desk, for many years, and he’d not been able to make much of a difference; expecting more of Detective Inspector Drake in the same position seemed brutally unfair. “I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right.”

For a long moment there was silence between them. Finally, Drake sighed. “We _can_ put an end to this violence, though," he said. "Something about that Prosper did seem off...”

For the second time in as many days, Reid was left with an uneasy feeling about a strange American in his station house. It _had_ been unnerving, first to be faced with the kind of evangelical intolerance the likes of which weren’t normally seen in England, at least not since before all the Puritans left for the freer pastures of America to begin with; to be questioned about their fitness for the duties in front of them was something else entirely. But even more sinister was the seeming threat that lived within the man's parting words. _It will take a lot more than a barroom brawl…_

Drake turned to the desk sergeant. “Tomorrow we put men out to try and find where they meet, where they congregate.” He pulled down on the hem of his jacket. ”I intend to make good on my threat.”

“As we should,” Reid said. But he wasn’t truly listening. Talk of abortions and threats of violence had compounded Reid’s already growing sense of unease which, coupled with his exhaustion, only served to distance him further from the goings on in the room around him. _You’re no good here, Edmund_ , he told himself. _It’s time to go home._

Drake slapped Reid on his back to wake him up, briefly, as he was pointed toward the door. “I believe this is where you were headed?”

He nodded and said his goodnights and before he knew it, Reid was out in the cool night air, walking along the damp cobbles toward his home.

Without remembering how he’d gotten there, the very next thing Reid knew he was dumping himself into his armchair beside a still-roaring fire. Sprawled out, he fell asleep with his hat still on his head.


End file.
